John Stuart Mill was right: “Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are Conservatives.”
I volunteered to help out at Masterminds Tampa Bay’s booth at the Synapse Summit 2023 conference yesterday, where Masterminds team moderator Vadim Davydov worked his photographic magic creating professional headshots for a long line of VIPs. It was my job to help get them registered and lined up for their sessions.
Masterminds Tampa Bay is “The Other Bay Area’s” Mastermind group, a peer mentoring group aimed at entrepreneurs and techies looking for connections, support, advice, assistance, resources, and so on. Many metro areas have Mastermind groups, whose name comes from The Law of Success by Napoleon Hill, a book that’s nearly 100 years old, where he defined the Mastermind Principle as:
“The coordination of knowledge and effort between two or more people who work towards a definite purpose in a spirit of harmony…
No two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third, invisible intangible force, which may be likened to a third mind.”
If you’re interested in the rest of Napoleon Hill’s definition of the Mastermind Principle, it’s summarized pretty well in this article. If you want to hear it in Hill’s own voice, watch this video:
Vadim’s lighting setup is a key part of why his headshots look so good…
…but more important are the instructions he gives you as you pose:
- “Follow my finger!”
- “Close your mouth!”
- “More sexy! Okay, too much sexy! Less sexy!”
- “Stretch your neck! Think turtle! Turtle, turtle, turtle, turtle!”
- “Squeeze your butt cheeks! Shake your booty!”
The instructions may sound nonsensical and hilarious, and he gets you into poses that you’d never do naturally, but they work. I kept telling people to just do what he says and to trust the process. And he kept cranking out gorgeous result after gorgeous result.
At 4:27 p.m. after nearly 8 hours of shooting, the last person in line had come and gone. That’s when I asked Vadim “Can you do one more — namely, me?”
He smiled and obliged. The official photo isn’t done yet, but every photo he took was displayed on a couple of screens in the booth. I took a couple of shots of these screens, and even these previews are great:
I can’t wait for the official shot! In the meantime, these are my new profile pics.
Thanks, Vadim, and thanks, Tampa Bay Masterminds for taking me on as a booth volunteer!
And once again: if you need to look great in a headshot, you want Vadim Davydov!
Tap to view at full size.
“Hey, Rupert — you know those stories where the girl wakes up the next day and goes ‘I was so shit-faced that night, I shouldn’t have fucked that guy?’ WE COULD BE THAT MISTAKE!”
Need context? Here’s the Superbad trailer:
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Earlier today…
…just wait till you see the next one:
Click to view the financial catastrophism at full size.
If you visit YouTube but don’t sign in, its suggested videos are based on best guesses based on trends, your location, your recent browsing history and a few other factors. I do this from time to time to see what sort of things YouTube’s recommendation algorithm serves up.
Click to view the financial catastrophism at full size.
Last night, it suggested videos from the FREENVESTING channel (and no, I’m not linking to those jackals), which simply describes itself as “An inspiring channel for those who are seeking growth.” Established on September 1, 2020, it’s accumulated nearly 100 million views to date, and it appears to have done so by harnessing the fear of financial doomscrollers.
Click to view the financial catastrophism at full size.
The videos feature financial gurus of varying quality. Some are more respectable, such as Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Some are semi-respectable: Ray Dalio and Cathie Wood. And then there are the outright assclowns — I’m lookin’ at you, Robert Kiyosaki and Dave Ramsey.
Click to view the financial catastrophism at full size.
The videos may change, but the themes and titles on the thumbnails stay the same:
- Don’t buy anything for 18 months
- Tell your family to prepare
- Why is nobody talking about this
- Everyone is going to be wiped out
- Most people will lose everything
- And my favorite, the “collapse” titles, which typically are:
- The collapse is coming
- The collapse has begun
- The collapse never ends
The channel was a little more “tips and tricks from the rich” in the beginning…
Click to view the financial catastrophism at full size.
…and they certainly covered all the angles, as you can see from these two contradictory videos, which were released one after the other:
But like any good YouTuber, they did some experimenting and found a winning formula with this gem from Mr. “Rich Shill, Poor Audience”:
…and it’s been doom-a-rama ever since.
You’d think it might be enough to say “watch this channel, but only to recognize hucksters when you see them,” or to learn some tricks if you’re an aspiring YouTuber, but I recommend doing so very sparingly. This sort of fear-based stuff has a way of getting in your head, even if you’re trying to watch it objectively and from a distance.