I can shapeshift into a giant monkey at will….

That Streamer With The Fake Fridge Watched Every Simpsons Episode At Once

I really don’t like to feature streamers or influencers too many times in Garbage Day because — like politicians — most of them are always one weird decision away from doing something very bad. Also, most streamers produce so much content that knowing all of their receipts is almost impossible. That said, I wrote about the Twitch streamer wayneradiotv in last Wednesday’s Garbage Day and I’ve got another clip for you because it’s genuinely unreal.

wayneradiotv told his followers that he was going to watch every Simpsons episode on Twitch. What he didn’t tell them was that he was going to watch all ‎684 episodes of The Simpsons at once in VR. Needless to say, it ddidn’t go well.

Let’s Talk About The #GenghisIsOverParty

Over the weekend, “Genghis Khan” started trending. As with every time I see a celebrity’s name trending, I was worried he had died, but it turns out that happened 793 years ago. He was actually “canceled” by a Twitter user named @Priya_27_. She has since deleted her account, but in her bio she identified herself as a doctor.

The eight some-odd tweets @Priya_27_ posted started with, “Genghis Khan did to central Asia what Islamic invaders did to India, maybe worse. He single-handedly killed 11% of world population at the time. Yet some want to glorify him as a hero conquerer. That’s your personal choice but objectively, Genghis Khan was a barbarian.” The whole thing was picked up by Twitter user @GarlicCorgi, whose “Genghis Khan is CANCELED” quote tweet was retweeted 5,000 times.

Which led to “Genghis Khan” becoming a worldwide trending topic on Saturday. If you logged in on Saturday night, I imagine Twitter was an extremely confusing place to be!

It was all actually honestly very funny and the story generated a bunch of memes and and was then carved up and turned into content for various websites to sell ads against. Everyone wins!

Except, because Twitter’s core feature is mass-scale context collapse and the harassment, hatred, and misinformation that results from it, the American Twitter accounts having fun with the “Genghis Khan is canceled” narrative missed why @Priya_27_ was even tweeting about the Mongol emperor in the first place. Read the first line of her first tweet again: “Genghis Khan did to central Asia what Islamic invaders did to India, maybe worse.” Podcaster Ahmed Ali Akbar has a fantastic thread here about why @Priya_27_ wrote her thread in the first place — it’s a Hindu nationalist talking point.

I found an archived link to @Priya_27_’s account and ran her profile pic through a reverse image search. I was curious how legit this account was. Hindu nationalist trolls are really well-organized, running multiple sock puppet accounts to push anti-Muslim rhetoric and using Google Docs to manipulate trending topics. Her avatar doesn’t seem to appear anywhere else online and her archived timeline from June seems to sadly be both authentic and pretty anti-Muslim.

But this sort of thing happens a lot — and appears to be happening with increasing frequency! It’s like how last month, QAnon fanatics jumpstarted a conspiracy theory about Wayfair and human trafficking which then kicked off a huge meme ridiculing it. And while I think it’s great that the entirety of Twitter can spend the weekend pointing out the absurdity of xenophobia, after watching how every election in the world over the last five years played out, we know now that just because a bunch of Verified comedians on Twitter are dunking on something, it doesn’t mean that other people aren’t totally buying into it. Here’s a good completely unrelated tweet that also sums up exactly what I’m talking about:

There’s A YouTube User Who Wants To Help You Shapeshift Into A Monkey

I recently came across a Tumblr post that really piqued my curiosity.

Further down the Tumblr thread, a user shared a screenshot of the “Monkey Transformation Affirmations” and I, obviously, had to learn more.

The user they’re describing goes by the name Therian Subliminals and they made a bunch of different videos from 2017-2020 that all promise to help you shapeshift into a different kind of animal.

The videos come with “affirmations” written in the comment section by Therian Subliminals. Here’s a snippet of what the Monkey Shapeshifter one looks like:

The affirmations go on for A WHILE. I’d estimate this is like 20% of the whole thing? A lot of these make sense, like, ok, yeah, open your chakras and visualize your DNA change into monkey DNA. But the anti-hypnosis/mind control theme is kinda anathema to the whole endeavor if you ask me.

The Therian Subliminals channel, best as I can tell, is meant for therians — people who believe they are actually animals spiritually. Therians, psychic vampires, and your garden variety normal vampires are all sort of related to otherkins, who, frankly, I’m shocked don’t come up more often in Garbage Day. (I did a little thing on psychic vampires last Spring.) “Otherkin” is the umbrella term for people who believe they aren’t human. I can’t find a link, but there was once a Tumblr user who was a grass otherkin and ran an anti-lawnmower blog. Truly excellent stuff.

lol anyways, I’m bummed Therian Subliminals isn’t still making content. I feel like this passage further down in the Monkey Shapeshifter Affirmation is a huge 2020 mood:

This Is The Punkest TikTok Video I’ve Ever Seen

I don’t want to say too much. Just check it out.

Also, I’m sorry so many of my TikToks in Garbage Day are Twitter mirrors. The original version of the one above is from TikTok user @reverent_marigold. Substack still doesn’t support TikTok embeds which makes featuring TikToks really tricky. I want to talk about all the stuff happening there while also making sure content stays connected to its creator. Still working on the right way to do it.

This Video Is From 2017, I’ve Somehow Never Seen It Before, It Changed My Life

Like I said. The video is from 2017. I’ve never seen it before. It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m beside myself.

Here’s A Good Tweet For The Fellas (Sorry Ladies)

And Lastly, The US Army Is Back On Twitch And Things Aren’t Going Well

I feel like the US Army eSports debacle has been this huge story playing out in the background all summer. If you haven’t been following it, I’ve got a big Garbage Day write-up about it from July right here you can check out. I also dedicated an episode of The Content Mines podcast to it earlier this month. Here’s a TL;DR for those just tuning in:

• The Army has an eSports team and that eSports team has a Discord and Twitch channel.

• The Army’s eSports team’s official Twitter account tweeted “UWU,” which is furry slang. Everyone was really upset about this.

• Because of the attention the UWU tweet caused, more people discovered that the US Army has been using eSports to recruit teenagers.

• Anti-imperialist Gen Z kids began raiding the Army’s Twitch chat and Discord server, spamming both with Wikipedia links to articles about American war crimes.

• The Army tried to ban people from talking about war crimes, but that might be a violation of the First Amendment.

• New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spearheaded an amendment to the to the House Appropriations bill to try and block the US Army from recruiting on Twitch.

• The Army eSports team went on hiatus. The amendment didn’t pass. The users spamming the chat about warcrimes were unbanned.

Whew! That was a lot. Jesus. After all that prologue, that brings us to where we are now. The Army eSports team is back up and running and the trolls are also back. Let’s see how things are playing out. I bet there’s literally no way to predict what’s happ—

Oh. Right. Yes.

That screenshot comes from this good Tumblr post collecting a bunch of screenshots and reports about the US Army eSports Twitch relaunch. Also, Waypoint reporter Patrick Klepek has a good thread on it too:

And here’s one more screenshot of the chat I found, posted by Tumblr user kamoi:

P.S. here’s a cool pic of an even cooler license plate.

***All typos in this newsletter are on purpose actually***