...based on zero evidence, a bunch of alt-right types decided that a pizza shop in Washington was somehow the center of some sort of bizarre satanic pedophilia cult/ring/thing, and that further that Clinton was somehow involved.
It evolved into some sort of weird meme/circlejerk/echo chamber/witchhunt/circus, centered around /r/pizzagate, complete with doxxing, stalking, physical protesters outside the shop, trending twitter hashtags, all sorts of madness
Unsurprisingly, the sub was banned. And if you choose to ban a sub focused around uncovering (I can't believe I'm writing this) Clinton's pedophile sex ring, then obviously this is because you yourself are a pedophile (and probably a Clinton supporter, which is probably worse). Why else would you help coverup Clinton's satanic pedophile sex cult?
(If you're curious, the original spark behind all this is Wikileak's release of John Podesta's emails. In them he mentioned eating pizza there. Which is clearly code for child abuse, and Podesta is sort of close to Clinton, so Podesta eating pizza is literally Clinton abusing children. No, I'm not making this up, and yes, that's the sum total of the evidence behind this. Literally, the whole thing is based on the supposition that it's so unlikely that Podesta likes pizza that it must be a codeword for child abuse, because obviously child abuse is much more understandable than liking pizza, or something.)
This is not true actually.
FBI and some forensic science experts used it internally way back before 4chan was even created.
[citation needed]
I was told wikipedia and Google work free of charge for everyone.
When we go out for lunch or whatever, we refer to child porn as CP. It's a bit awkward to explain we house the largest collection of CP.
Intellectually, it appears we're cruising along at approximately the "asphinctersayswhat" level of complexity.
I've seen it referred to, jokingly, o 4chan and other forums.
For people who are baffled and/or puzzled, it's based on the acronym - child pornography - cp - cheese pizza.
> Post CP is an acronym in which CP can have a variety of meanings. Initially used as an acronym for 4chan posters to indirectly mention or request a child pornography thread, in later years the acronym became commonly associated with the posting of other subjects with the same first letters (C & P, most notably “Cheese Pizza”) to parody prohibited request threads or to troll those who hope to find child pornography.
We Are Anonymous - Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous and the Global Cyber Insurgency (2013) Parmy Olson
> There was also "u jelly?," a way of asking if someone was jealous, and "cheese pizza," or "CP", slang for child porn. More shrewd 4chan users would start discussion threads about literal cheese pizza, including photos of pizzas, and add hidden links to a child porn archive within the image code -- accessed by opening the pizza images in a text program instead of an image viewer.
“hotdog” = boy
“pizza” = girl
“cheese” = little girl
“pasta” = little boy
“ice cream” = male prostitute
“walnut” = person of colour
“map” = semen
“sauce” = orgy
The FBI document detailing the symbols can be found here: https://wikileaks.org/wiki/FBI_pedophile_symbols
The similarities were rather striking. One pizza place even changed their logo shortly after the comparisons were drawn. This only added more fuel to the fire. http://i.imgur.com/GIRxh8r.jpg
Myself being a huge fan of conspiracy theory I've seen this before: the minds become focussed on finding evidence, discarding Occam's razor, and mining for all the nuggets. What remains are coincidences that appear too good to be random. Compare with the "backwards playing record hidden messages" hype. Once someone points it out to you, your mind starts hearing it too.
P.S.: The "hashes" found in the .jpg images were a dead end / the result of pareidolia.
This document says a heart within a heart is symbol for GirlLover - symbolizes a relationship between an adult and a minor girl.
Wait 'til the conspiracy theorists see the logo for a multinational ice-cream company:
https://twitter.com/ClintonGlobal/status/651606553884258304
(A Unilever and Clinton Foundation cooperation found in https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1596)
and some older abuse charges brought up against people connected with Unilever.
See also: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:AfaAe2...
Also consider the possibility that the pedo symbology was inspired by the ice cream logo (and not the other way around).
But most likely just a (meaningful) coincidence. Hearts and spirals are common design elements after all.
...
...
Jesus Hubert Christ I think Reddit managed to out-detective the folk who accused a victim of being a terrorist.
Thanks, I guess. That, in a way that horrifies me due to what it means about my brain, makes sense now.
But of course, the fact that nobody can find the actual alleged instagram photos is just proof of the coverup!
The Reddit's CEO should have been made aware of such troll'ish behavior. He responded in the worst way possible.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/05/13/flight-logs-show-bill-c...
> “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York Magazine for a 2002 profile of Epstein. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/09/the-friendship-between-tru...
Going meta-conspiracy. Perhaps the pizzagate stuff was a psyops pushed to detract from other, more relevant, stories.
Warning, it's a rabbit hole. I'm not saying any of this is correct but it's pretty weird stuff.
There's a decent amount of circumstantial evidence for it, but I personally still think a bit of a stretch.
Six years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh-dNAby174
Four years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5LyzuVUweU
Eight years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_C75RO6LL4
Once the conspiracy theory exists you're going to get a mix of people who really believe it finding subreddits to share "proof"; trolls who like the lulz; people who don't know and don't care but who hate that politician and will share anything negative about them; and baffled people on the outside who can't tell the difference and can't understand how anyone can think that politicians order children for abuse by email.
Every case has to be considered on its own merits, of course.
Who is Holly Greig?
What was the Cleeveland Ritual Abuse Scandal? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_child_abuse_scandal (See also Rochdale, Orkney, Broxtowe, etc.)
Those historic scandals don't stop misreporting today, see the coconut shell reported by police and media as being a skull fragment -- even after it had been tested.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_child_abuse_investigati...
The sad fact is that child abuse is fantastically common, and by devoting so much time to bogus bullshit we're failing to protect children who are being harmed right now, mostly by their relatives.
Of course 2 or more people participating in certain acts, or even assisting a pedophile means "conspiracy".
In PizzaGate, I am keeping an open mind, and not scoffing; mainly due to some rather weird Instagram pictures and comments that used to be publicly available, that were linked to Comet Ping Pong and/or the owner. They were quite... unusual.
Neither NYT article that I found, directly address what the innocuous meanings of hash tags like #killroom (with pic of enclosed windowless room) and #chickenlover (pic while holding a young boy) are. Like I said, I found this unusual.
No, because the Instagram pictures are faked. Snopes debunked this. http://www.snopes.com/pizzagate-conspiracy/
Snopes has not "debunked" anything. Once, the couple who run the Snopes blog were good at investigating urban legends and such. In recent years they have gotten more political and more obvious in their selective coverage to fit an agenda.
Note, I am 100% against harassing the guy and his business, but you cannot deny his instagram had the pictures on it. Does that justify a barrage of internet hate and accusations of criminality? No. But lying about Instagram pictures being faked when they weren't is also not helpful.
More 'fake' instagram posts tied to comet ping pong that make the conspiracy nuts raise their eyebrows:
[NSFW] http://archive.is/S6jzu
Unless you are suggesting archive.is is a malicious actor or has any known cases of editing or changing archives made using its service. To my knowledge, there is no evidence or reason to believe either accusation.
The archive.is links are not "created" by 4chan or Reddit users. The links are created by request of the service. It shouldn't matter who requests the service as long as the service is reliable.
If the NYT investigative report team claims the archive.is links are doctored - I'd lose my faith in the NYT's ability to investigate as they have clearly failed in their duty.
I frankly cannot believe we are even debating this here.
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/pizzagate-shows-how-...
The snopes page doesn't even use simple photoshop methods to show how the images were modified.
It's...reaching.
Spez was in the wrong, but I don't blame him one bit. Trolling that sub with disinformation seems like fair play.
Linking liberals and Democrats with pedophilia has been a staple of American right-wing activism for years.
Yup.
No word on if John Podesta is also conducting satanic ceremonies as well.
Seriously. I can't even say that without snickering. Makes you miss the days when Hillary Clinton was just decorating the White House Christmas Tree with crack pipes doesn't it?[0]
[0] http://libertynews.com/2015/06/flashback-flotus-hillarys-x-r...
Don't get me wrong, I think the evidence for it is a stretch, but there is some objectively weird stuff in the emails that do not make sense if taken literally.
Your proposition hinges on replacing the the axiom that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence, with extraordinary claims are more plausible to mundane ones.
Satanic child abuse is an old moral panic from the 1980s, of which nothing ever existed. Seriously, they're all discredited. Some even involved people claiming preschool teachers were fucking literal demons while riding on brooms.[0]
I toss out a joke about the completely discredited claim that Podesta is a warlock because of a mention of world famous artist Marina Abramović.[1] But of course, the fault is on me, because this is HN, and of course it's going to be treated as gospel.
But hell, what do I know. I'm contemplating ascending to the Aetheral plane because I've been listening to backmaksed Judas Priest[2] and playing Dungeons and Dragons[3].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satanic_ritual_abuse_a...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backmasking#Subliminal_persuas...
If Conspirators hold you capable of everything, its sort of flattering - in a darth Vader, Astmatic sort of way..
The only thing that can be debated at this point is if / how to decode the message. I don't believe someone could make a good faith argument saying that it's not an encoded message.
What the hell is a pizzagate? I saw it mentioned a few times while reading the mess that is the reddit detectiving for Assange but never saw a clear description. And now it is apparently a pro-Trump thing too?
What was the logic behind calling him a pedophile for that?