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Re:Conspiracy theorists mistake guitar pedal diagram for “5G... by cameldrv on Monday January 04, 2021 @03:49PM (#25637708)
It's instructive to think about how these things come to be. Yes, a bunch of people are duped and spreading this around, but somewhere out there, there's someone who took a schematic of a guitar pedal and relabeled it. Maybe they're just in it for the lols, or maybe they have some other motivation.
Re:Conspiracy theorists mistake guitar pedal diagram for “5G... by userbinator on Monday January 04, 2021 @05:18PM (#25639054)
Indeed, I think someone is just taking the piss out of the conspiracy theorists...

The sad part is that, despite the huge amount of (true) information available to them on the Internet, the majority of people seem to have become no more knowledgeable about the technology they use in everyday life. You can instantly look up the part numbers on that diagram and find out what they are; and if what you find you do not understand (e.g." what is an op-amp?"), you can continue searching. But the majority just take it at face-value, and re-share with zero thought. It's ironic to think that a lot of these people think we are the "sheeple", when they in fact behave much the same way...

Re:Conspiracy theorists mistake guitar pedal diagram for “5G... by lilyball on Monday January 04, 2021 @05:05PM (#25638887)
They almost certainly did it as a joke. If they had some other motivation they wouldn't have picked something easily identifiable as analog audio equipment.
Re:Conspiracy theorists mistake guitar pedal diagram for “5G... by Theory5 on Monday January 04, 2021 @08:39PM (#25640971)
I work in Infosec, and I keep getting the question "why do all these scammers send poorly worded, frequently misspelled, obviously fake emails by the millions?"

And I lay it out for them. The short answer: is because it works.

If they send 5k emails out, asking for $2k, all they need is for a small percentage to fall for it.

They know how much effort to put in to get a specific return.

Why can't that be the same idea here? Pick out the ones who don't ask questions, or take 2 seconds to Google something, etc. Whip them into a frenzy. Then steer them to a specific site. Or to donate. Or even just start following whomever wrote this out, to be convinced to donate somewhere later.

Re:Conspiracy theorists mistake guitar pedal diagram for “5G... by lilyball on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @04:25PM (#25651306)
My understanding is the poorly-worded emails are deliberate, to act as a filter to get rid of the folks who are unlikely to fall for the scam. This means the scammer isn't wasting time talking to these folks when they'll never pay up.

This doesn't apply to the diagram. In this case, it wasn't just laziness. The author actually added not just the "5G Freq" label, but added "Bass", "Treble", etc in the exact same style. And I know they added this because I dug up an original diagram where the labels look different. The author erased the original labels and re-did them (and added "5G" to the pre-existing "Freq"). This was clearly a joke. Someone doing this for real would have simply left off the other labels and only kept "5G Freq" (or would have added other suspicious labels).

Re:Conspiracy theorists mistake guitar pedal diagram for “5G... by sorokod on Monday January 04, 2021 @05:26PM (#25639145)
Looks like "they" know their customers.
Re:Conspiracy theorists mistake guitar pedal diagram for “5G... by fsflover on Monday January 04, 2021 @05:06PM (#25638910)
Woudn't it be a nice way to destroy the respect of core conspiracy theorists who convince others that they know everything?