Two of the things I think 2022 will be remembered for is the fall of Twitter and the continued rise of TikTok. For the uninitiated, TikTok is a social media platform that allows users to create and share short video clips, often set to music. It has become particularly popular among younger users, and has gained a reputation for being a breeding ground for viral content.
Content on TikTok moves very quickly and can become extremely popular and widely shared on the platform, with many users actively striving to create content designed to go viral, as this can lead to a large number of views and followers on the platform.
One trend of this sort which became popular with TikTokers was ‘vabbing’. Proponents of vabbing, who are almost exclusively young women, say that the practice greatly increases their sexual success.
‘If you vab, you will attract people,’ said one vabber. ‘I have done this for years and it works every single time,’ said another. ‘Men can’t resist’.
Vabbing, is a contraction of ‘vagina’ and ‘dabbing’, where you wear your own vaginal secretions as if they were perfume. Dabbing it behind your ears, on your neck, and on your wrists — before then going on a night out and letting your natural pheromones attract the manly men that your Chanel No5 would have left un-phased.
Exactly which secretions vabbers refer to is unclear, because the technique is often described in euphemisms, but I assume they are referring to the vaginal lubrication produced during arousal, rather than the more common-or-garden wetness which keeps your ecosystem ticking along.
While some claim to have been vabbing for decades, it came to prominence recently when the self-described sexologist Shannon Boodran wrote about it in her 2019 book The Game of Desire. At the time, she wrote:
I am certain that every single time I employ it, it makes me feel like an enchanted goddess with a delicious secret.
Vabbing has recently enjoyed a resurgence in interest, with predominantly young women trying out vabbing at the gym, on a night out, or wherever, and then reporting their amazing success on TikTok.
Of course, because of the way TikTok works, this not only drives other people to try it for themselves and publish videos of their own, but it also drives other people to post videos decrying the practice as disgusting, and yet more to post videos on how this vabbing stuff this is all nonsense and you’re falling for a scam. All of which means that vabbing as a topic gains prominence and is pushed into more and more people’s feeds.
But does wearing your vaginal secretions increase your sexual success? Is there any good data to support vabbing?
You will probably be unsurprised to learn that there is no good data on vabbing itself. While proponents claim it is not a new phenomenon, it is at least a niche phenomenon, so nobody yet has conducted twenty-year studies on it. Proponents do often cite pheromones as the mechanism by which vabbing works, however, and there is certainly data on that.
Pheromones are chemical messengers which are transported outside of the human body, in contrast that with hormones, which are similar chemical messengers that remain within the body. Many animals use pheromones as part of reproduction, with sex pheromones being used to indicate to others that a particular animal is sexually available.
But are humans one of those animals? As best we can tell, probably not. Humans do not appear to be biologically equipped to use pheromones. The organ responsible for the detection of pheromones – the vomeronasal organ – is present in many common mammals, including cats, horses, pigs, and even some primates. But in humans the genes which code for this organ appear to be nonfunctional, and the organ itself, assuming it can even be located, does not appear to be connected to our nervous system. Even if the human vomeronasal organ were functional and detecting something, it has no means to tell the rest of the body about it.
Evolutionarily speaking, this might make some sense. Many other animals use pheromones for communication — indicating sexual availability or marking territory — whereas humans have replaced these functions with Tinder and the Land Registry.
Many animals use pheromones for communication — indicating sexual availability or marking territory — whereas humans have replaced these functions with Tinder and the Land Registry.
Even if the vomeronasal organ is functional, which we don’t know is the case, do human even produce chemicals we could characterise as pheromones at all?
A study published by the Royal Society in 2017 looked into this question. Ninety-four participants, forty-three male, fifty-one female – all self-reported as heterosexual, non-smoking, and white, were recruited from the campus of the University of Western Australia. One assumes the participants were also all cisgendered, though the paper itself is silent on this.
Across two days, participants were assigned to exposure to either androstadienone (AND) or estratetraenol (EST), purported to be a human male and female sexual pheromone respectively. Exposure was achieved by a cotton ball taped under the nose, and in both cases, the scent of the pheromone was masked with clove oil. So this wasn’t just as simple as recognising a smell, there had to be some chemical-biological reaction to the pheromone. And of course there was also a clove-oil-only control.
The treatment order was randomised. So you either got clove oil on day one, and clove oil plus pheromone on day two, or the other way around. The choice of pheromone used each session was assigned pseudo-randomly (pseudo in this case to ensure balance).
Participants were then shown photographs and asked to rate them. The women were asked to rate men, and the men asked to rate women, on the basis of how attractive they found them. And what they found was… absolutely nothing. There was no difference in attractiveness scores when exposed to pheromones compared to controls.
From the paper:
Exposure to the putative pheromones had no effect on [attractiveness ratings]. These results are consistent with those of other experimental studies and reviews that suggest AND and EST are unlikely to be human pheromones.
This tells us only that AND and EST is not likely to be a human pheromone, not that we don’t produce pheromones at all, though AND and EST are the most commonly cited candidates for human sexual pheromones.
We also don’t know, of course, that EST is the pheromone which is supposedly associated with vabbing, not least because the proponents of vabbing don’t name a specific chemical which is supposed to be the ‘active ingredient’ here, they just say hand-wavingly claim ‘it is pheromones’ and maybe point at some animal studies.
But the presence of AND doesn’t seem to increase men’s attractiveness to women, and EST doesn’t seem to increase a woman’s attractiveness to men. But then we should have known this already. You go into any one of the (variably) discrete sex shops you’ll find tucked away in UK high streets, and you’ll see for sale so-called pheromone sex sprays, which purport to make you irresistible.
And of course they don’t do a thing. If human behaviour was significantly influenced by the effects of pheromones, products like those sprays wouldn’t just be something you find behind the counter at a sex shop. It would be sold in bundles alongside a pack of viagra. It’d be next to the condoms in Boots. Or maybe they wouldn’t be legal at all, as a form of sexual coercion.
So if pheromones play no part in human sexuality, why do so many young TikTokers report vabbing as an amazing success? There are a few possible explanations. One is the file drawer effect. Women who vab and then go out clubbing and don’t pull perhaps aren’t as likely to make a TikTok video about it. That will skew reports into the positive.
Another is confirmation bias. Women who vab and then go out clubbing are going to attribute any romantic or sexual success to the vab, because that’s what they’re expecting to happen. Even if those successes would have come anyway.
A third is what some reporters characterised as a sexual placebo effect. Women who vab and then go out clubbing are going to feel more confident in themselves, they are going to feel more attractive, feel more irresistible, and that additional confidence might be what is resulting in an increase in their romantic and sexual success.
And finally, there could be a scent thing going on. That doesn’t mean it is pheromones at work, but it could be as simple as men, consciously or subconsciously, recognising the smell from sex. It’s classical conditioning: you smell that a lot when you’re engaged in sexual activity, and when you smell it in another context it turns you on.
Personally, I think this latter explanation is unlikely because, let’s be honest, there are an awful lot of far more potent smells you will find in your local nightclub or gym that you would have to get past before you can detect the subtle scent of vaginal lubrication on a woman’s neck. But I struggle to argue that this is impossible.
Returning to Shannon Boohran’s book The Game of Desire, she is a lot more circumspect about the efficacy of vabbing than the current TikTok vabbers appear to be. The full quote from Game of Desire was:
Regardless of if vaginal pheromones truly make a person irresistible or not, the fact that you think it does, will cause you to act in a bolder, more confident manner. There are no health risks for others and unless you suspect you may have bacterial vaginosis, it will not make you smell bad. I’ve used this technique countless times in the past ten years and have had mixed results: sometimes people are flocking to me, sometimes I don’t notice a difference. So while I’m not sure how effective this experiment is, I am certain that every single time I employ it, it makes me feel like an enchanted goddess with a delicious secret.
So maybe it is just a confidence thing? And if so, does that mean it’s all okay? I mean, there are plenty of other things that people do to give them a lift of confidence when they’re on the pull. Contouring your boobs, wearing lifts in your shoes, or putting on your best shirt. Is a little spritz of vab maybe a-ok?
While vabbing is probably harmless in 99.9% of cases, there may be some risks. Most notably, the risk of passing on an STI. Now this is probably low risk, as many sexually transmitted infections are actually remarkably fragile and don’t survive well outside the body. But Hepatitis B, for example, can live on a surface for several days. So if you have an STI, especially Hep B, probably stick to your bottle of Chanel.
Ultimately, if it helps you feel good about you — and it is safe to do so — I don’t think it’s my place to tell anyone how they should be living their lives. So while it’s unnecessary, if you’re going to have fun then vab away. But it probably isn’t going to be the magnificent man-magnet you think it is.
On the 8th of March 2014, MH370, a Boeing 777-200ER aeroplane, seemingly disappeared off the face of the Earth. Its disappearance had the world scratching its head. Months went by after the first search began, but nothing. It seemed impossible. How could a plane of that size just disappear?
Right when all hope seemed lost, one man stepped up to the plate: Raja Bomoh Sedunia Nujum VIP was his title (direct translation: Shaman King of the Astrology World). Ibrahim Mat Zain was his name. This man assured the world that he knew how to find MH370. With confidence, he (and his team) wielded coconuts, whilst chanting prayers on a “magical” carpet. What did he discover from this mystical ritual? MH370 had crashed near an island… somewhere. Incredible. The powers of true magic.
Obviously, the ritual did not really succeed in discovering the location of MH370. Even I could have guessed that it probably crashed somewhere near an island. In fact, that is one of the first few assumptions that most people had of the MH370 situation. Nonetheless, the ritual was recorded and became worldwide news.
It was a ridiculous situation. Rather than focusing efforts on the MH370 disappearance, attention was turned towards this ritual which depicted Malaysia in a bad light. No matter one’s opinion on the general existence of magic, in this case we can be sure it was definitely not real: Ibrahim, the shaman himself, admitted it was just an act and that he was ordered to do it. Yet, even though this incident drew worldwide infamy, shamanistic services and products are still prominent in Southeast Asia, specifically here in modern Singapore.
Singaporeans remain quite religious; 80% of Singaporeans report to have religious affiliations, according to Singapore Department of Statistics. This is especially so for the Malay-Muslim population, with 98.8% of Malays reported to be Muslim. Even with such strong religious beliefs, I would contend that most Singaporeans seek modern solutions as their first choice to solve whatever problem they face. When one is stricken with a fever, they go to a clinic. When one is facing extreme stress, go to a psychiatrist. For COVID-19, 93% of the population has been vaccinated with at least a single dose. I am confident to describe most Singaporeans as rational people, especially those in my age group (young adults).
Or at least, I used to be confident… before I realised that the market for black magic, and for magical items in general, was so prominent in Singapore.
As a Muslim growing up, I was aware of shamanistic practices from stories told by my parents, and from movies and TV shows. I never really took it as fact, nor did I deny its existence. I was always told by my parents to steer away from people who engaged in such activities or were in possession of “magical” items. I paid this advice no mind as I always assumed that Singapore was not that kind of place, at least not anymore. So, when I found out that this industry was in fact thriving, it came as a bit of a shock.
I could not wrap my head around why people were still adamant on involving themselves in such mystical practices. As I pondered this, two questions came up: Why do people go to these shamans for help? And, if magic is not real, why are there so many supporters for it?
For a couple weeks, I left these questions unanswered as I had other commitments. I essentially forgot about this topic until I coincidentally saw an ad while browsing the local marketplace app, Carousell.
The ad was for a love binding ritual done by a dukun (witch-doctor), and it had over 100 likes, with numerous positive testimonials from previous customers. It struck me as an odd conjunction of traditional thinking and modern technology: a practitioner of magic with ancient origins, advertised to the masses through a modern and different form of magic – the internet.
It wasn’t a one-off – there were numerous accounts advertising similar services and items. One in particular (pusaka.sg) has been active for the past seven years and has apparently experienced great success. The sheer number of accounts and listings in this industry showed me that this pseudo-black market was even more prevalent than I’d thought. As someone who never delved into these services (nor know anyone who did), I needed to consult a subject matter expert. That’s how I found Ustaz Ruknuddin.
Ustaz Ruknuddin is a Ruqyah practitioner with his own company, Khidmaat Al-Arkaan. He is a certified religious teacher of Islam who has been in practice for the past 3 years. Ruqyah itself can be simply defined as the recitation of Qur’an as a means of treating illnesses and other ailments. Looking at it from a complete outsider’s perspective, his practice is similar to the shaman’s, though is opposing in its morality and purpose (through the Islamic purview). No matter the case, Ustaz Ruknuddin explained why he believes the shamanistic practices take place, and the reasons why people engage such services:
…those who indulge [in shamanistic practices], are people with envy, or any other purpose.
He explained that the clientele often has something that they are insecure about or want to change, such as their attractiveness, likeability, wealth, or physical strength. Or it can be down to relationships; either wanting someone to like you back or causing a breakup between two individuals. In other words: human desire.
For the customers who wanted to be more handsome, more wealthy, or even physically stronger, these aspects of people are not fixed. Attractiveness can be changed though many other means: exercise, fashion sense, and humour. The same can be said for all the other attributes, though the extent of improvement differs greatly from person-to-person. But while these end goals can be achieved through other means, why do they opt for the shaman route. The answer is quite simple: It’s easy.
The reason that many people go for these services is that they are looking for a shortcut. Either they have tried to improve themselves before but to no avail, or they wanted changes to happen as quickly as possible. The process is shortened, and made easier for the consumer; however, for most situations there are consequences suffered. As the saying goes: “There are no shortcuts in life – only those we imagine.”
The reason for why there is such strong support in the Singapore context is that most of us are brought up religious, and commonly told of ‘true’ ghost stories. It is to the point that 68% of young adult Singaporeans believe in the existence of ghosts. This is despite the fact that research has found that higher education is associated with a lower tendency to believe in the supernatural. One theory might explain it: Existential Security Theory. This theory argues that higher feelings of security (correlated with higher education) reduce the likelihood for one to believe in the supernatural.
However, while Singapore is a well-educated society, there might be additional factors in the unique stance that Singapore has on race and religion. This is clearly depicted in Singapore’s national pledge:
“We, the citizens of Singapore, pledge ourselves as one united people, regardless of race, language or religion, to build a democratic society based on justice and equality so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation.”
Singapore is often described as a country with racial and religious harmony (the degree to which this is true is in itself contentious, but that is a different story). This harmony has been achieved through educating the masses on Singapore’s past mistakes; Maria Hertogh Riots, Communal Riots in 1964, and 1969. This idea of mutual existence between different races and religions have been ingrained in (most) Singaporeans since they were very young, and this translates to an accepting mindset in regard to spirituality and the supernatural. Hence the belief in the supernatural persists even amongst the highly educated in Singapore… and, as a consequence, the success of the black magic market on Carousell.
Coming back to that ad, how can there have been thousands of customers, but not much backlash in terms of its lack of effectiveness? Surely, there would be a few disappointed customers, or even just skeptical people going in to test the waters? I took a look at two of the most popular Carousell sellers: element.mustika & pusaka.sg. Both had essentially no negative reviews. I wondered if they might be removing negative reviews, or manipulating the ratings by inputting fake 5-star reviews, but that seems rather unlikely due to the rating system of Carousell:
Perhaps it could be that spending over S$100 (roughly £62) to prove an online seller wrong is a bit too much to expect of a casual skeptic. Especially considering that even one instance of debunking could hardly be enough to discredit the service in the eyes of the thousands of people who feel they have had positive experiences from it. Persuading the ardent believers is always an uphill struggle.
At this point, it is important to ask, therefore: is what these sellers are doing inherently wrong? These practices seem outdated from an outsider’s perspective, and we may even think that they are scamming people for money. But for many of the accounts, the sellers themselves do truly believe in the effectiveness of their goods and services. My biggest concern is where the practice hurts the consumer and community they are in (which has occurred before). But if not, I would just treat it exactly the same way we treat religion; believe what you believe in, just don’t force it onto me.
At the end of the day, these services are just one of many ways for people to satiate their human desires, as long as they’re not investing too much time or hope in the outcome. And you never know, maybe the rituals are what you need to become a millionaire overnight… though I won’t be pinning my hopes on that!
Do you ever wonder what becomes of Dragons’ Den stars after their tenure on the long-running BBC investment reality show? Fans with particularly long memories might recall former Dragon Rachel Elnaugh, founder of Red Letter Days, and may have been surprised at the headline that appeared recently in The Mirror:
Dragon’s Den star turning ‘vagina of land’ into farm for ‘food apocalypse’ group
Filed under the “Weird News” section, the article details the entrepreneur’s involvement in “The Inner Sanctum”, (also known as Phoenix Rose), which purchased a 70-acre tract of land known as Cressbrook Dale, in the Peak District National Park.
The Times also featured the story, with a punnier but less explicit headline that summed up the substance of the controversy behind the land purchase:
Dragons’ Den star’s antivaxer sanctuary has locals breathing fire
The group’s intentions are not entirely clear, but their original brochure referred to freeholders having perpetual rights to the produce, including vegetables, from the land. Other statements suggested using the site as a shamanic retreat, and a site to create a “food forest” to nourish “the entire Cressbrook Community” when the “predicted food apocalypse” arrives.
Cressbrook village locals do not seem convinced by this offer, and having concerns over developments on the site, which they say risk destroying “an irreplaceable and unique landscape”, have formed the Save Cressbrook Dale campaign. Since its formation, the campaign group has secured an emergency Tree Preservation Order on the site; a Temporary Stop Notice which makes it illegal for the new owners to execute any more work on the land without seeking the relevant Planning Consents; and a Planning Contravention Notice, asking the owners to inform the authority about how they intend complying with planning regulations.
Elnaugh has responded with a series of videos, including one from 9th January 2023, which says that the site has been improved rather than harmed, including the installation of steps which she says have been vandalised as part of a campaign of intimidation, hate crimes, criminal damage and trespass.
From an outsider’s perspective, it is hard to judge the merits of the counter-claims, though given the decisions against Elnaugh’s group so far it certainly seems that she is facing an uphill battle to realise her group’s vision on the Cressbrook Dale site.
It is, however, encouraging to see that the local Cressbrook Dale village campaigners seem motivated not just by a desire to save their local tranquillity and wildlife. As The Times article reports:
one of the big concerns for residents was the fear that the area would become a beacon for people with extreme and potentially dangerous views.
What views might visitors or freeholders express that are of such concern to local residents?
On COVID-19, Elnaugh has tweeted that the vaccine programme is “Child Abuse” and that England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty “will hang for this”. This violent suggestion presumably relates to the ongoing and mistaken claim by anti-vaxxers that the Nuremberg Code prohibits the COVID-19 vaccine programme. However, as FullFact says:
The code says nothing about the use of tested and authorized vaccines or treatments on patients.
I must also have missed the bit where the code calls for Chief Medical Officers, doctors and nurses to be executed for giving well-tested vaccines to consenting patients, which is a topic that Elnaugh returns to in her more recent video, saying that ‘just following orders’ isn’t an excuse.
Elnaugh has also written that “these vaccinations will contain the nanotechnology to create trans-humans” and that Covid is part of “a much bigger plan of mass command and control”. The nanotechnology claims have of course been fact checked and debunked repeatedly.
In the same piece, Elnaugh wonders whether the World Health Organisation is so keen on vaccinations because “they are funded by Big Pharma”. While it is technically true that pharmaceutical companies do fund the WHO, it would be surprising if they were making policy decisions on the basis of such funding, which amounts to less than 0.001% of their total budget. My guess is that the WHO is keen on COVID-19 vaccines as they know vaccines to be extremely effective, and saved between 14.4 million and 19.8 million lives in their first full year of operation during the pandemic.
Elnaugh also retweets her appearance on IckonicTV, which as the name suggests, is an online streaming platform containing – amongst other delights – 30 years of materials from everyone’s favourite goalkeeper-turned-conspiracy theorist, David Icke, who really did mean lizards and not Jews when he endorsed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, apparently.
Her feed also contains several posts encouraging people to head out and join a Stand in the Park, the stalls that sprung up as anti-lockdown hubs. These acted as one of the primary sources of distribution of anti-vax “truthpaper” The Light, which readers may recall heavily feature COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and also contain climate change denial, transphobic and homophobic authors, and defences of antisemitic hate speech and dictators.
Stray into the world of her Telegram, and you have a whole lot more. While it’s not clear whether Elnaugh manages the channel herself, or whether it’s managed by someone on her behalf, the first post on I found on the feed was a forwarded message from a channel called Tommy Robinson News, run by the far-right activist, which celebrated far-right French leader Marine le Pen leading the defeat of one of Macron’s COVID-19 restrictions. Scrolling on I found:
A forwarded climate change denial meme.
A forwarded chemtrails conspiracy theory meme.
Posts about Freedom Alliance (the anti-lockdown party Elnaugh was going to stand for as MP) infighting and claims that they were “controlled opposition”.
A post encouraging people to form a “posse” to go to a vaccination centre and check they are obtaining informed consent from the vaccinated.
An explainer video on common law, which – based especially on references to Maritime law – sounded to my non-legal mind that it may have some beliefs in common with the Freemen on the Land movement.
A forward of a poem comparing the pandemic restrictions to not just the Holocaust, but also the Armenian Genocide, Holodomor, the Great Leap Forward and the Killing Fields.
This is, of course, a free country, and people are allowed to be wrong, and to associate with people who are dangerously wrong or who express disgusting opinions. However, we are also free to want to distance ourselves from such sentiments (as the UK Conservative Party recently did with aforementioned MP Andrew Bridgen), so I can very much understand the people of Cressbrook village not wanting a person with such associations to set up shop on their doorstep.
There must be something in the water in Leicestershire. It’s the only explanation I can think of. A decade ago, when I first got involved in organised skepticism, one of the most notorious promoters of pseudoscience in the country was Conservative MP David Treddinick – the friend of the friends of homeopathy, the Honorable Member for Holland and Barrett, and a constant advocate for the use of alternative medicine on the NHS. He was, between 1987 and 2019, the Member of Parliament for Bosworth, in Leicestershire.
However, it seems when skepticism closes a door, pseudoscience opens a window – in this case, in the form of Andrew Bridgen, the Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire, the neighbouring constituency to Bosworth.
Bridgen came to his seat in 2010, and has been no stranger to the headlines. In 2014, he was criticised for using his time in parliament to formally ask a colleague if he would agree that:
Given that the political system of the world’s superpower and our great ally the US is very susceptible to well-funded powerful lobbying groups and the power of the Jewish lobby in America, it falls to this country and this House to be the good but critical friend that Israel needs?
When some people (quite reasonably) pointed out that alluding to a powerful Jewish lobby that prevents American politicians from criticising Israel was propagating an antisemitic trope, Bridgen defended the remarks, saying:
It was alleged to me that no American politician would be remotely critical publicly of anything Israel does because as they put it, if they do, their opponents in the elections or in the primaries would have millions of dollars dropped into their campaign fund, without even asking, to get rid of them.
A few years later, in 2017, Bridgen was further criticised after complaining about the National Trust commissioning an artwork at Kingston Lacy in Dorset, commemorating the lives of 51 men who were executed for being gay. Bridgen claimed that it was totally inappropriate for the charity to give space over to the memorial, despite the property being formerly the home of William John Bankes, who was forced to abandon his restoration of the site and flee the country when authorities discovered that he was gay.
Bridgen is clearly an MP not afraid of speaking his mind, even if (and possibly, especially if) his opinions are controversial or touch on issues within the culture war. And while August 2022 saw the end of a long-running legal battle with members of his own family, culminating in his eviction from a property owned by the family firm and an order to pay legal costs of £800,000, just a few months later he was making headlines again with a new preoccupation.
There has been a significant increase in heart attacks and related health issues since the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines began in 2021. This needs immediate and full scientific investigation to establish if there is any possible link with the COVID-19 vaccination rollout.
As is customary for petitions from the public that pass 100,000 signatures, a parliamentary debate was arranged for October 24th, 2022, to discuss the merits of the issue. Bridgen was one of the MPs to speak in favour of launching a public inquiry into vaccine safety, complaining that “people who have questioned the efficacy or safety of the vaccines have generally been cut down and cancelled”.
During the debate, Bridgen cited evidence from a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which he explained found that one in 500 children under the age of five who received a Pfizer mRNA vaccine were hospitalised with a vaccine injury, and one in 200 had symptoms ongoing for weeks or months afterwards. That equated to 40 of the 7,806 kids studied who had symptoms that were still ongoing and of unknown significance by the end of the trial, suggesting that 0.5% of vaccinated children would develop a serious adverse effect that would last for weeks, or even months.
“Given that evidence”, he asked, “perhaps the Minister could explain why we are vaccinating healthy children who are at minimal risk from Covid. Surely that is in breach of the Hippocratic oath to do no harm.”
“Where is the cost-benefit analysis by age group for the vaccines”, he continued, “given the risks that they carry, especially as the pharma companies are now admitting that vaccination does not impact on transmission? Did the Government know, when they mandated vaccines for care and NHS workers, that the vaccines had not been tested to find whether they prevented transmission?”
Bridgen clearly was well-versed in the talking points of those who question the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine, including this oft-repeated gotcha that the vaccines were not tested to find whether they prevented transmission (given the urgency at the time, they were tested as to whether they successfully prevented hospitalisations and deaths – which they were proven to do, safely). It isn’t hard to see why, Bridgen has such familiarity with those talking points, given the apparent source of his information on the topic. Later in the same speech, he cited Florida’s surgeon general, Dr Joseph Ladapo, as having said:
Studying the safety and efficacy of any medications, including vaccines, is an important component of public health. Far less attention has been paid to safety and the concerns of many individuals have been dismissed—these are important findings that should be communicated to Floridians.
It is worthy of mention that while Dr Ladapo is indeed the man hand-chosen by Republican governor Ron DeSantis to be his surgeon general, he has spent the bulk pandemic promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as cures for COVID-19, claiming lockdowns and masks were useless, and signing the Great Barrington Declaration in favour of building ‘herd immunity’ by letting the vast majority of people get infected with the virus. Dr Ladapo had previously called vaccination programs in general a “fear-driven cult”, and he’s currently spending most of his time trying to stop gender-affirming care in Florida. This is the respectable source of vaccine information chosen by a sitting MP, and one that felt worthy of raising in Parliament.
Bridgen concluded his speech by explaining that he:
also had the pleasure of meeting Dr Aseem Malhotra at the APPG launch last week. He made a very strong case for the idea that up to 90% of adverse vaccine reactions are not even being reported.
Dr Malhotra himself is likely worthy of a full article in his own right, though the extensive analysis elsewhere in this publication by Danny Bradley amply demonstrates the celebrity consultant cardiologist’s insight and accuracy with regards to COVID-19. That said, for reasons I will come back to, if it were true that only 1 in 10 reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine were reported, it would be neither shocking nor indicative of an untold tsunami of vaccine-related injuries and deaths.
Given that Bridgen has referred to one particular study – and has returned to his analysis of the same statistics on numerous occasions since – it is worth a digression to understand whether his understanding of the reported harms of the Pfizer vaccine accurately reflect those of the study’s authors.
Toepfner et al, October 2022
The study “Comparative Safety of the BNT162b2 Messenger RNA COVID-19 Vaccine vs Other Approved Vaccines in Children Younger Than 5 Years”, by Toepfner et al, was indeed published in JAMA on October 18th, 2022 – just six days before Bridgen’s first speech on vaccine safety. And it does indeed look at 7806 kids under the age of five, who had been given one of a series of doses of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, at various doses: 3 micrograms, 5 micrograms or 10 micrograms. In the results, they report that ten of the children in the study required inpatient treatment, and that 40 had ongoing symptoms at the time of submitting the study, of unknown severity. So is Bridgen right?
I don’t believe he is, and a closer examination of the results of the study – and, indeed, the conclusion drawn by the authors themselves – illustrates why. Firstly, by “ongoing and of unknown severity”, what the authors effectively mean is that at the time of the study finishing, some participants were still experiencing symptoms. But this is to be expected – there are more than 7,000 children involved, each of whom were vaccinated at different times, some of whom are onto their third dose of the vaccine. If the researchers had to wait until, say, at least 90 days after any of the children had a received a vaccine, they’d never have been able to publish the study, as waiting for one group of kids to hit that milestone would inevitably see a different group of children receive their next booster.
Instead, a cut-off date was chosen, even if that meant including children who had, for example, received a booster merely days before that date. The only stipulation was that enough time had elapsed since their first dose of the vaccine.
Perhaps of importance is that those 7000+ children included lots of kids who were suffering from a variety of underlying health conditions prior to vaccination:
Among 684 of 7806 responding participants (8.8%) with comorbidities, the most common diseases were pulmonary (190) or cardiovascular diseases (90) and chromosomal aberrations (166).
Given that COVID-19 is a disease that affects the respiratory and cardiovascular systems, and that some of the fears around potential side effects of the vaccine included cardiovascular symptoms, awareness of prior conditions in these areas among the studied population is certainly prudent.
From there, the study looked out for symptoms following vaccination, and categorised those symptoms by duration and severity.
We retrospectively defined postvaccination mortality (0 of 7806 [0%]) and symptoms requiring inpatient treatment (10 of 7806 [0.1%]) as SAEs [Serious Adverse Events].
So, there were indeed 10 children who required inpatient treatment. However, the paper comes with a supplemental table explaining what symptoms precipitated that inpatient treatment – of those, one was hospitalised for a headache, which began the day after vaccination and was gone before the next day. Two had dizziness, that lasted for around half a day. One fainted, and was kept in hospital for a day before being released. Two had coughs, that were gone after around a week. Two developed irregular heartbeats that were gone after one day and 2.5 days, respectively.
This is not to downplay the seriousness of a child being admitted to hospital – I’m sure it was a worrying development for these children and their parents. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that, firstly, this study does not allege causation, and so all we can say is that of 7,608 children who were vaccinated, 10 of them went to hospital for a day or two, within a few months of vaccination.
It’s also important to remember that, as the study highlighted, some of these children had underlying medical conditions. It may well be the case (and it is not possible to tell either way from the data provided) that the child who was admitted to hospital with a cough was one of the children with pulmonary disease; their cough could therefore have been unrelated to the vaccine, or their admission to hospital could have been a mere over-precaution given that they were in an already at-risk group. The same can be said of the two children who had minor cardiovascular symptoms.
What we can be absolutely sure of, however, because it is explicit in the data, is that none of the symptoms that resulted in those 10 children requiring inpatient attention lasted for more than five days.
There were, however, some children whose symptoms were described as of unknown duration, because they persisted past the endpoint of the study. Are those, then, a fair basis for Bridgen’s calls to suspend the vaccination program pending a full inquiry? Again, in my opinion, they are not. Of the 40 children whose symptoms were of unknown duration, the supplementary table explains that for 10 of those kids, the ongoing symptoms were “redness or swelling at the injection site”, and for another 12 it was “pain or discomfort at the injection site”. Further, one had pain in “the limbs generally”. Sore arms after an injection account for 23 of the 40 children Bridgen is citing as vaccine injured.
Of the others, two had abdominal pain, one had dry skin, one had a nonspecific “other complaint”, and the rest don’t appear to be recorded. It is not impossible that symptoms more severe than “sore arm and funny tummy” were left out of the analysis, but that would represent a baffling decision by researchers explicitly looking for serious side effects. It is far more likely that the remaining symptoms were equally mild. It is also deeply unlikely that, as Bridgen characterises, these symptoms persisted “for weeks or even months” – far more likely is that these were symptoms of children whose most recent vaccination occurred shortly before the study’s end date.
To be clear, unlike Bridgen (who opened his speech by talking up his degree in genetics, behaviour and biochemistry), my degree is not in a scientific-related field, and I am an amateur at reading papers like these. However, the conclusion I’ve come to having combed through the data tables has one key advantage over Bridgen’s characterising of this study, in that my conclusion matches that of the paper itself. Indeed, the paper concludes:
This study revealed a similar overall safety when compared with existing non–SARS-CoV-2 vaccines administered in the same study population, with minor differences in the probabilities of injection-site symptoms, fever, musculoskeletal symptoms, or otolaryngologic symptoms [swelling of lymph nodes] compared with non–SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations. An increased frequency of injection-site symptoms was detected in children older than 24 to younger than 60 months who were administered 10 μg of BNT162b2, which should be taken into consideration in future dosage-finding strategies in this age group and be carefully weighed against potential improvements in immunogenicity at higher dosage…
…no SAEs were reported for children administered the low dosage of 3 μg, which is currently evaluated in the BNT162b2 licensure study.21 In addition, no mortality was reported.
So, the compelling evidence that Bridgen presented to parliament as proof that the vaccines were leaving children incapacitated and injured for weeks or months at a time was nothing of the sort, and his conclusion directly contradicted that of the researchers who carried out the study.
Equally, returning to his other key claim – that vaccine-related adverse events are underreported by as much as 90% – this, too, seems unremarkable, given that the list of things that count as adverse vaccine reactions includes sore arms, headaches, fatigue, flu-like symptoms, and swollen lymph nodes. It’d be surprising if readers who are vaccinated haven’t experienced a few of those adverse reactions, yet it’s almost certainly the case that they didn’t report those symptoms to the Yellow Card scheme. But, of course, if you had been left paralysed or permanently harmed, or even dead, as a result of the vaccine, you’d be likely to report that more often than one time in 10. The bias against reporting side effects significantly lessens the more severe those side effects are.
Campaign of vaccine scaremongering
Bridgen finished his October 24th statement by saying he wished he had longer to speak about this – which is probably why he returned to this topic several more times in parliament. Like when, during Prime Ministers questions on 7th December, he claimed that
There have been more reported deaths and adverse reactions following mRNA vaccination in 18 months than there has been to every conventional vaccine administered worldwide for the last 50 years.
There is a sleight of hand here, even if inadvertent: while deaths are rare, as demonstrated above, adverse reactions are not rare… they’re just, predominately, not often serious. Given that over 151 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in the UK since 2020 – and more than 13 billion have been given out worldwide in the same time – it may be little surprise that the number of (almost always extremely minor) adverse reactions to this vaccine is quite large. But if the overwhelming majority of side effects are, as documented in Bridgen’s JAMA report, primarily headaches and sore arms, they do not add up to an urgent health crisis that necessitates halting the vaccine program.
Later in the same session, Bridgen went on to say:
Given that mRNA vaccines are not recommended for pregnant women or those who are breastfeeding, would my right honourable friend overturn the Big Pharma-funded MHRA’s recent recommendation that these experimental vaccines are administered to children as young as six months of age?
Note that the MHRA has now become the “Big-Pharma funded MHRA”, in an attempt to remove the credibility of the official agency of the Department of Health and Social Care tasked with ensuring the safety and efficacy of medicines, by tainting it with the language of ‘Big Pharma’ conspiracies. This particular claim of Bridgen’s was picked up by Full Fact, who pointed out that it is untrue to say that the vaccines aren’t recommended for people who are pregnant or breastfeeding. In fact, the NHS says:
It’s strongly recommended that you get vaccinated against COVID-19 to protect you and your baby… It’s safe to get the COVID-19 vaccine if you are breastfeeding.
This was actually something that Bridgen acknowledged in the October 24th debate:
The hon. Gentleman may not be aware, but contradictory evidence was issued on two separate days. One piece of advice said that pregnant and breastfeeding women could have the vaccine, and then another Government body said that that was not safe and that it did not recommend it.
However, what Bridgen paints as haphazard and confused policy making that changes from one day to the next was actually far more straightforward: in December 2020, guidance was released advising that the vaccine was not yet recommended to be given to anyone who was pregnant. Five months later, in April 2021, that advice was updated based on the latest evidence, which advised that the vaccine did not pose a safety risk, and should be recommended to anyone who was pregnant or breastfeeding. This is precisely how science is supposed to work: a precautionary principle initially, but then advice gets updated as the evidence base becomes more established and robust.
Bridgen returned to the subject in a debate on December 13th, repeating the claim he inherited from Dr Aseem Malhotra, about adverse effects being underreported by 90%, as well as restating the statistic of one in 200 kids being hospitalised by the vaccine. He went on to claim that mRNA vaccines are experimental and unsafe, and that mRNA vaccines are a form of gene therapy – all of which ranges from wildly misleading to wholly untrue.
Bridgen even claimed that a senior figure in the British Heart Foundation was involved in “covering up clear data that reveals that the mRNA vaccine increases inflammation of the heart arteries”, which led the charity to categorically deny the allegations. Claims made in parliament have parliamentary privilege, of course, and are therefore not subject to libel proceedings, even if the charity were minded to explore their legal options.
Redpilling in real-time
What’s been especially interesting to see is that, alongside this misuse of parliamentary time, Bridgen has become increasingly prolific on this topic on Twitter. In October, a cursory scan of Bridgen’s Twitter usage (tweets, not replies) revealed an unremarkable mix of tweets of support for Prime Minister Liz Truss, and then tweets of support for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, plus announcements of various media appearances on GB News and TalkTV, plus criticism of the HS2 project. Only a couple of tweets in amongst that standard fare, around the time of the vaccine debate in parliament, mentioned COVID-19 or the vaccines.
Similarly, in November, Bridgen could be seen (somewhat ironically, all things considered) calling for Matt Hancock to be expelled from the Tory party for appearing on I’m A Celebrity, and sharing more appearances on GB News and TalkTV, with just one tweet calling for an investigation of the vaccines.
However, during December, Bridgen tweeted 50 times, 41 of which were about the alleged dangers of the vaccine – including retweeting a GB News video in which consultant cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra praised Bridgen for speaking up in parliament, and retweeting a GB News interview in which he and Dr Aseem Malhotra were both interviewed by Lawrence Fox about how dangerous they all agree the vaccines are. 82% of this sitting MP’s social media usage was to spread baseless conspiracy theories about a life-saving intervention.
So far at the time of writing, midway through January, Bridgen has tweeted 70 times – incredibly, only one tweet was about something other than vaccines (the outlier was a warning about getting NHS care during the various strike actions taking place). In doing so, he’s shared Neil Oliver of GB News, Tucker Carlson of Fox News, 2021 Rusty Razor winner Mike Yeadon, notorious antivaxxers Del Bigtree and Robert F Kennedy… and, of course, his good friend, the celebrity cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra.
In fact, technically, Bridgen has tweeted at least 71 times so far in January, because on the 11th January he shared a post from the far-right blog “Zero hedge” titled “CDC Finally Releases VAERS Safety Monitoring Analyses For COVID Vaccines”, written by someone going by the name “Tyler Durden”. Rather than reflecting reporting and analysis from the CDC, as the headline might suggest, the blog post actually cites analysis published on the Epoch Times – the far-right media company operated by the Falun Gong new religious movement. That’s the level of quality sources this sitting politician was relying on by this point.
Uncritical of the data, or of its source, Bridgen shared the post, tweeting it with the comment “As one consultant cardiologist said to me this is the biggest crime against humanity since the holocaust”.
This was the point that, after months of misinformation, Bridgen was deemed to have crossed the line, and he was suspended from the Tory party by Rishi Sunak. As a result of the suspension, Bridgen will remain as MP for North West Leicestershire, but will be forced to sit as an independent pending a formal investigation. That investigation looks set to be a formality, especially given that Bridgen responded to his suspension by releasing a video statement in which he doubles down on his claims about the alleged dangers of the COVID-19 vaccine.
As he says in the video:
There are reasonable questions about the side effects of mRNA vaccines, especially when we know categorically that the current risk of harm to most of the population – and especially young people – from COVID-19 is minuscule.
Of course, what he’s missing here is that if indeed COVID-19 is only of minsicule risk to the people of the UK – a point that, with the threat of Long Covid still looming, is highly debatable – part of the reason for that relatively lower risk is the success of the vaccination program he’s working so hard to halt.
In the video, and in subsequent interviews, Bridgen also denies that it was antisemitic to compare the vaccine rollout to the Holocaust, telling the BBC:
I completely refute any allegations of anti-Semitism and it was ludicrous when you think that the actual person I was quoting, via top cardiologist, actually was an Israeli doctor of criminology and sociology at the Hebrew university in Jerusalem.
There’s much in here to unpack: firstly, the “some of my best sources are Jewish” argument, which does not absolve the offence of comparing public health to genocide; secondly, a doctor of criminology and sociology is hardly best placed to judge the merits or efficacy of a vaccine rollout program, however Jewish he may or may not be and thirdly, while it’s true that Bridgen described the Holocaust as heinous, going on to use it as a point of reference for the rollout of a vaccine entirely undermines his point.
Bridgen has threatened legal action against anyone who has called him antisemitic for the use of his analogy, but what he fails to understand is that, while he may genuinely feel that he holds no antisemitic views, he has on at least two occasions now engaged in arguments that involve antisemitic tropes. It is entirely possible to unwittingly repeat arguments without recognising them as antisemitic, but at the very least it suggest Bridgen needs to take more care around what could arguably be described as a blindspot of his.
Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, Bridgen explained that he was quoting an Israeli sociologist via a top cardiologist. It seems almost certain that the cardiologist in question, and the recurring character in this radicalisation journey, was Dr Aseem Malhotra. From Bridgen’s first public comments on the vaccine, to his repeated statistics and talking points, right up to his non-pology video, Dr Malhotra seems to have been a constant advisor and guide down the rabbithole.
Looking back at Bridgen’s journey over less than four months, we can clearly see him get increasingly radicalised over time; starting with a dripfeed, and building until the barrier burst. His story is a perfect illustration of the point that even politicians can get ‘pilled’, and that even the wealthy and powerful are no more capable of avoiding rabbitholes than the rest of us.
The COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the first half of 2020 bringing along with it much ignorance and uncertainty. This was a fertile time for the spread of lies and misinformation about the disease. In Brazil, this process was detailed in a study by Marilia Gehrke and Marcia Benetti, from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). They identified the main themes, platforms, and actors involved in the dissemination of false content during the early days of the pandemic in Brazil.
In their paper, published in the journal “Fronteiras – Estudos Midiaticos,” they show that lying about the performance of the federal government, attacking opponents of President Jair Bolsonaro, advocating for useless treatments, and sharing false – and conflicting – information about vaccines were tactics employed by people around or supporting Bolsonaro – when not by the president himself. Social media channels were the primary spreading vector.
The UFRGS research duo analysed 407 texts classified as false by Latam Chequea Coronavirus – a collaborative platform created by fact-checking agencies in Latin America that brings together, in Brazil, the work of the Agencia Lupa, Aos Fatos, Estadao Verifica, and Agence France-Presse (AFP). The texts were published between March 15th and July 21st, 2020.
The authors defined “disinformation” as false content created and disseminated to deceive the public, harm the reputation of people and institutions, and obtain financial or ideological advantage. They avoided using the term “fake news” because it has been “widely used by politicians to attack the credibility of the press and also because it is a paradox since, by definition, the news is rooted in a factual basis.”
Main Themes
First, the researchers evaluated the topics covered by the texts, which they classified into seven categories: China, Contagion, Cures, Data, Economy, Politics, and Others. The most frequent was Politics (25.55%) – an umbrella term covering government acts – followed by Cures – which included treatments and vaccines – with 20.64%. In third place, Data – as in false data and statistical content – (19.66%) was followed by texts on Contagion, including social distancing (18.43%). The fifth place belongs to the Economy (7.13%) and sixth to China’s role (6.39%) in the pandemic. Only nine articles (2.21%) could not be framed in predefined categories and fell into Others.
After this first screening, Gehrke and Benetti selected 300 fact-checked texts from Agencia Lupa and Aos Fatos for a more in-depth qualitative analysis, “seeking to understand the main meanings constructed in each topic and the disinformation strategies.” According to them, under the theme of Politics, the dominant narrative sought to favor President Jair Bolsonaro – either by boosting his image or slandering his opposition – particularly the Workers’ Party (PT), the governor of São Paulo, João Dória (PSDB), and the then speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Rodrigo Maia (DEM).
According to the researchers, these fake contents sought to benefit Bolsonaro by showing the federal government as “sensitive to and concerned with the livelihood of those who are most vulnerable” by announcing non-existent projects or distorting his role in releasing economic aid to the population affected by social distancing measures; as a “competent and responsive” leader, with false or misleading information about confronting the pandemic in the country and compliments of global leaders or institutions to the president’s conduct; or, paradoxically, as “prevented from fighting the pandemic” by a distorted reading of decisions of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) on the subject.
In this sense, they also highlight texts that sought to harm opponents of the president, such as those who accused the PT, its members, and other rival politicians, such as Dória, of being “irresponsible” for being against the indiscriminate use of chloroquine, which had already been rejected by scientists as a possible treatment for COVID-19, or as “hypocrites” for allegedly failing to comply with measures of social isolation, among other criticisms.
Aligned with these attacks, disinformation content’s second most frequent theme addressed bogus treatments for COVID-19 and vaccines. Examples of the first type mainly praised not only chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine but also ivermectin, nitazoxanide, and azithromycin – all drugs proved to be useless against the disease and that at some point were, or even continue to be, defended by Bolsonaro or his followers in the fight against the pandemic. Moreover, they also used nonsense advice such as intaking hot water, teas, certain foods, or condiments as possible “homemade cures.”
Regarding COVID-19 vaccines – which were still developing at the time of research and had barely completed the first stages of safety and efficacy tests – the fake contents analysed by researchers were sometimes contradictory. They were sometimes portrayed in an exaggerated optimistic way, such as when stating that “the vaccine cures in three hours,” and sometimes they appeared under a conspiratorial bias, linked to plans for population monitoring and world domination by actors such as Bill Gates. Their safety was also questioned.
Closing the themes covered, almost 85% of the fake content analysed by UFRGS researchers under the Data category (numbers, and statistics) we can find claims such as that hospitals were actually empty; deaths from other causes were registered as COVID-19, accusations against doctors, health facilities, or even local governments of doing this for financial advantages or more public resources; distortions around the survival rate of the infected; and unrealistic expectations about the end of the health crisis.
Regarding Contagion, the main target of the lies were social distancing measures, including assertions that they were useless or that isolating – even by force – groups considered to be of greater risk, such as the elderly, would be enough; or that other preventive measures, such as the use of masks or hand sanitisers, were dangerous.
Disinformation Strategies
Next, Gehrke and Benetti sought to identify the main disinformation strategies used to disseminate false content in Brazil in the early days of the pandemic. They applied classifications proposed by other researchers who postulated seven basic types: Fabricated Content, Manipulated Content, Impostor Content, False Context, Misleading Content, False Connection, and Satire or Parody.
According to Gehrke and Benetti, almost half of the false contents of the qualitative analysis (48.34%) resorted to creating a False Context, such as using actual facts or genuine images out of their corresponding real situations. “The fact occurred, but not for that reason; the image is genuine but refers to another situation; the document is true, but it does not concern that subject; the video is real, but it was shot before the fact that it is being connected to,” they said.
The second most recurrent type of misinformation was Manufactured Content (28.67%); that is, totally false and deliberately created to deceive. This group includes messages trying to take advantage of the population’s ignorance and lack of knowledge about science and the role of institutions, creating actors, research centers, or statements out of full cloth.
The third most widely used strategy was Impostor Content, which applies the official logo or visual identity of an organisation (ministries, political parties, tech companies) in false content or falsifying statements from genuine sources. It was found in 12.33% of the texts analysed. The fourth category, with 7.33%, was Misleading Content, where originally accurate information is distorted with tactics such as using an incorrect scale to show or compare unmatched data.
Actors and Media
As for those responsible for spreading disinformation, the study identified 50 people or institutions backing 60 pieces of false content. Not by chance, almost all of them came from people around or supporting Bolsonaro. At the top of the list is congressman Osmar Terra; then comes President Jair Bolsonaro himself; one of his sons, Carlos Bolsonaro; economist and far-right influencer Rodrigo Constantino; state representative André Fernandes; former congressman Roberto Jefferson; and the Midia Five and Gazeta Brasil websites.
Other prominent names cited by the authors are journalist Alexandre Garcia, Evangelical pastor Silas Malafaia, businessman Winston Ling, former presidential advisor Arthur Weintraub (currently an oponent of the president), congresswoman Bia Kicis, congressman and president’s son Eduardo Bolsonaro, the late philosopher and far-right-wing “guru” Olavo de Carvalho, former Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, and even the Federal Government’s Communication Department, which made an institutional defense of the use of chloroquine.
“We are not saying that these actors created the rumors and misleading content, but that they played a fundamental role in the distribution and reach of this type of material,” the authors said. “In general, people who assume the role of a non-scientific authority use their rank within a network to put into question information from expert systems such as the press, universities, and international organizations. Then, when suitable, they distort science and take technical information out of context. In common, such actors all shared false content which opposed social distancing and favored keeping the economy wide open and attacked politicians who took measures to contain the spread of the disease, such as the governor of São Paulo, João Dória. They also question the data on the pandemic”.
As for the platforms used to disseminate misinformation, the researchers noticed that many texts were shared in one or more of them. Nevertheless, they identified Facebook as the source of most fake content (65.11%), followed by WhatsApp (15.82%), and Twitter (6.9%). According to the researchers, the phenomenon may have been fueled by the fact that many of the plans offered by mobile operators in Brazil give unlimited access to social media and messaging apps, and some degree of sample bias. Fact-checking agencies may also check more content from Facebook due to a partnership with the platform that makes asking for verification of content and denouncing disinformation relatively simple to users..
By the very nature of the platforms, text was the primary format for spreading disinformation (52.76% of occurrences), either alone or often accompanying images and videos, which were themselves the main formats in 24.74% and 20.04% of events, respectively.
“Although the text is naturally the most recurrent format, since it works as both foundation and complement to other materials, the number of images associated with disinformation present in a quarter of this study’s corpus is noteworthy,” the authors wrote. “The use of images along the texts has, among its main functions, to illustrate and selectively to emphasize the elements of disinformation, not to mention encouraging false beliefs about public personalities and attributing disinformation to them.”
Given this scenario, the researchers emphasise in their final considerations that, although lies are not a modern invention, modern technology and a logic that benefits impostors financially, favour their dissemination, creating what they called “an environment of absolute information insecurity.”
“This disinformation environment was already a major problem, but in the context of the pandemic, it has become even more of an issue because it has an immediate effect on the healthcare system, on people’s behavior, and, ultimately, on life itself”, they said. “Disinformation depends essentially on maintaining prejudices and’ beliefs that paralyze the ability to think and act freely.’ False content is produced and shared to maintain dogmatism, since poorly informed subjects are easier to persuade and motivate. More than the specific allegations of each content, cherished beliefs and convictions, as well as the political and economic interests of those who produce and share lies and fraud, are important.”
In August, there was a special lecture by Kim Tae Won, executive director of Google Korea, who is in the spotlight as a ‘mentor for the young”. The theme was “How to live as a Creative Talent in the 4th Industrial Era”. The lecture hall was packed with young people who wanted to be prepared for the uncertain future. No matter the form, people always flock to places that tell you the “future”.
Moreover, in an economic situation filled with uncertainty these days, it is impossible to force young people to only be determined and passionate. Youth, struggling from the economic recession and job shortages, are looking for ways to reduce even a little bit of anxiety of their unforeseeable future; and in doing so, they’re finding their way to fortune-telling shops.
Recently, more and more people in their 20s and 30s are visiting fortune-tellers. In particular, the closer it gets to the end of the year, the greater the interest in New Year’s fortune. At the crossroads of choice, they seek fortune-telling out of a strong desire to know what their luck will be with regards to education, jobs, relationships, marriage, and more.
“Saju”, Korean fortune-telling, is the practice of predicting a person’s fate based on the date and time of their birth. It is usually performed face-to-face, but more recently, phone calls and fortune-telling apps have been on the increase.
One of the TV shows that has been gaining popularity in Korea, “Ask Anything”, uses the theme of Saju fortune-telling. Run by two show hosts who have nothing to do with fortune telling, they receive personal stories from visitors and comfort them by listening and providing advice. The show has been running for three years, and shows no signs of slowing down. Koreans are extremely dedicated to and invested in finding out their future, even if it means broadcasting their concerns on national television.
By means of traditional Saju, practitioners claim to measure employment luck, and determine whether a blind date will be successful. There is also a view that the purpose of seeing a fortune-teller is to know when to make key decisions in life, and whether a particular strategy will be successful. In Eastern culture, at least from a traditional point of view, fortune-telling refers to a unique disposition of one’s nature and personality (Harper, 2018).
We often ask for advice before deciding on important matters such as moving, marriage, or changing jobs, or when something bad happens. However, in the more recent harsh and uncertain times, the question most often asked is, “What will my future be like?”
This anxiety may be the main reason that young people are seeking mystical answers – because there is a desire to be comforted by fortune-telling for one’s unstable feelings.
Saju and Tarot cafes are frequently visited by young people in their 20s and 30s, concentrated in areas such as Hongdae, Jongro, and Gangnam Station in Seoul (Du, 2022). It is no longer an unfamiliar scene for young men and women to flock here in a casual atmosphere that is distinct from the existing traditional fortune-telling.
As the COVID-19 incident prolonged, interest in divination is believed to have increased due to anxiety about the future (CBS, 2020). But over the past couple of years, especially due to the outbreak of the pandemic, more and more people in their 20s and 30s are looking for online and offline stores.
To understand why the young generation of Koreans are turning to this traditional method of mystic fortune-telling, I met with Kim, who has visited many Saju readers.
Personally, when I was having a hard time financially, I went to see a fortune teller at the recommendation of an acquaintance who likes fortune-telling. Since then, I have been looking around for a fair amount of fortune-tellers. The future is dark, opaque, and I don’t know how to live, let alone the future, so I visited a lot of fortune-telling shops.
One of the many reasons why Kim continuously went to see countless fortune-tellers is that he was told very comforting words from the first shop he visited.
I still remember what he told me. “You already have nothing to do but hit the bottom of your life and go up, but you don’t have to come. From now on, do what you want to do and live.” This inspired me with confidence.
For Kim, this was the first time hearing comfort in six months. Listening to positive feedback, despite the reality being in the gutters, it was comforting to hear such words. People often visit fortune-tellers when things get tough; they feel better when they hear good things like, “Things will bring you luck in a few years” – especially when these hopeful words come from someone deemed to have a unique set of powers and divination skills.
Perhaps, for those who do, these are the reasons people can even get addicted to fortune-telling. When one’s current position is very difficult, objectively, socially, and economically, or one is not in the position he or she wants, people tend to find external sources of comfort and certainty. For some Koreans, that source is Saju.
When our situation begins to improve, for whatever reason that might be, the need for that external comfort begins to diminish. As Kim told me:
At some point, I did not even think about fortune-telling or mythology. Come to think of it, this happened ever since I became well off. It was attaining a certain degree of economic and social status on my own and gaining a little confidence in myself.
In many ways, fortune-telling plays a similar role to religion: people go to churches, temples, or mosques to pray and confess more frequently when things are not going as planned in their life, or there are huge uncertainties ahead. People find the need to depend on something beyond human capabilities.
However, unlike religion, fortune-tellers can claim to provide direct and tangible answers – even if these answers are just wishful thinking and comforting platitudes. That tangible and direct positivity, according to Kim, was key:
If you find yourself constantly going back to fortune-tellers, you are likely to have heard good things in your first few visits. Think about it, if you have visited three places, and all I heard was “bad” or “no luck”, I would have stopped. Because they told me good words of encouragement, I kept going back like how a drowning man will catch at a straw.
The downside here is that the customer can become stuck in their so-called ‘destiny’, and can find it hard to reclaim their agency in the face of this apparently-fixed path. A moment of realisation may be needed for those who fall into this category by looking into how they can overcome tricky situations by taking control of their lives, rather than giving it to others.
This time of the year is when Korea’s largest and most important exam for high school students take place. “Soo neung”, which is the so-called K-SAT, determines the university they will be able to enter, and the path of their career. Parents of these students will go into temples and churches for the entirety of their one-day exam schedule. The whole country dedicates the day to help these exam candidates in whatever way possible: provide a lift to the exam venue, flights are not allowed within a certain boundary of the exam venues. Fortune telling visits by students and parents spike at this period, as they scramble to figure out their academic luck. A bad luck verdict may prepare those students for failure even before the exam begins.
Fortune-telling has no scientific substance to it. There is no evidence to support the the categorising of people into their given destiny based on a simple combination of details such as date and time of birth. Yet, with a market for fortune-telling amounting to a $3.7 billion business, it thrives at the centre of Korea’s culture. Visitors may not get statistical proof of what they hear; the most they can hope for is some comforting words, and if they’re lucky, those will make their visits worthwhile.
For my final article about the Better Way antivaxxer convention in Bath, I want to discuss the relationship between antivaxxerism and antisemitic conspiracism. For years now I’ve written about the reverse Godwin effect and the overrepresentation of Jews in conspiracy narratives. In the eight months since I started this series, antisemitic conspiracism has had yet another moment, driven by the promotion of Hotep style antisemitism by Kanye West with individuals like Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones. This has provided everyone with an object lesson in the Bill Cooper connection I wrote about almost two years ago.
Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and his choice to superficially signal a commitment to free speech has further exacerbated the problem. By allowing many individuals, including West, back onto the platform, despite their previous advocacy for antisemitic conspiracism, Musk has contributed to a permission structure that will allow antisemitic conspiracism to further dominate mainstream discourse. It’s impossible to really assess the harm caused by such a large-scale platforming of antisemitic conspiracism as mere “heterodox” thinking, but the harm is impossible to deny. Musk ultimately chose to re-ban West for posting a Raelian symbol that includes a swastika, in what appeared to be an attempt at antisemitism, despite the group holding no antisemitic positions. This messy handling of antisemitic conspiracism doesn’t help anyone, and more likely contributes to the conspiracism.
The connections between antivaxxer conspiracism and antisemitism are welldocumented, along with their connections to anti-globalist conspiracism. Many of these tropes were on display at the Better Way conference, including repeated accusations that Schwab (who is Jewish) and Gates (who is often accused of being secretly Jewish) are using vaccines to microchip and/or murder large portions of humanity.
If these were the only connections between antivaxxerism and fearmongering about Jewish people, there’d be no need for this article. The problem is, there’s a much weirder connection that’s significantly more difficult to discuss. Namely, that the rise of the modern antivaxxer movement was heavily funded by the Jewish billionaire hedge fund manager Bernard Selz and his wife, via their philanthropic org The Selz Foundation. That’s right, both pro and antivaxxer positions are apparently secretly run by Jews. The plot thickens!
According to an exposé the Washington Post, in around 2012 The Selz Foundation shifted its focus from cultural and environmental philanthropy to antivaxxerism, particularly Andrew Wakefield’s defence fund and subsequent non-profits. That funding helped produce Wakefield and Bigtree’s 2016 movie Vaxxed, which arguably launched the current antivaxxer movement. In 2017, the Selz foundation provided three quarters of the funding for Del Bigtree’s Informed Consent Action Network, one of the main organisers for the Better Way conference. Lisa Selz herself served as the president of ICAN until 2018.
So, how do we talk about Mr and Mrs Selz without succumbing to our own antisemitic conspiracism? The key is emphasising a fact that should be obvious, but always seems to bear repeating: Jews are not special. We’re neither the chosen people of God nor are we uniquely evil, cunning, stateless overlords. Judaism is not a uniquely weird religion, nor does our history of oppression make us special.
Evidence of Jews having higher than average IQs and being “overrepresented” in various fields is fraught with confounding variables. Ironically, claims of Jewish superiority have been heavily pushed by white-supremacist-style race realists, who push their political agendas by contrasting Jews as a “model minority” with communities they consider biologically inferior, particularly people of African descent.
The “specialness” of Jews is crucial to antisemitic conspiracism, because it explains both why and how Jews apparently control everything. Hitler, for example, went to great lengths to argue that the Jews represent a tremendous threat as an enemy, because of their high levels of cunning and global diaspora network, combined with their hatred of all things Christian and wholesome. The fixation on Jewish “specialness” also likely contributes to the reverse Godwin phenomenon, because of how it sets Jews up as the most plausible Big Bads of any conspiracy theory. So, when we discuss how the Selz family have funded antivaxxerism, we must emphasise that there’s nothing special about their Jewishness that leads them to cause these harms.
Take, for example, the question of their motives. Due to their family’s extremely private nature, there appears to be no information on why the Selz’s started funding antivaxxerism. The Washington Post was unable to make any progress explaining their behavior, and since then no one has provided a substantiated or even plausible explanation. Now, consider if the situation was reversed, and they were promoting vaccinations. In that hypothetical, their privacy would absolutely be used as evidence of malicious intentions. Yet, ironically, here in reality where they’re promoting something genuinely harmful, it seems far more reasonable to assume that their motives are genuine and their character no different than any other antivaxxers. That assumption yields a predictable and boring set of options, which is a good sign when you’re trying to avoid conspiracism.
There is no one path to antivaxxerism, though there are several character dispositions and beliefs that may put someone at higher risk of shifting in that direction. It’s possible that someone directly related to the Selz family was negatively impacted by genuine but rare vaccine side effects, or were diagnosed with autism at some point after receiving vaccinations, thereby giving the false impression of a causal relationship. However, no one has reported any such family connection.
Barring an inciting incident like that, we have to look to character and circumstances. Some research suggests that anti-vaccine attitudes are driven by psychological factors, like high levels of conspiratorial thinking, strong reactions to anything that impinges on personal freedom, and disgust sensitivity. Again, there’s no reported evidence of any of these factors in the Selz case.
Thanks to the promotion of antivaxxer conspiracism by right wing political leaders like former president Trump, there’s now some evidence of a correlation between political alignment and vaccine hesitancy. Trump was an early adopter of antivaxxer conspiracism, promoting Wakefield’s claims about an autism connection as early as 2007, nine years before Vaxxed premiered. Trump’s comments suggest he was heavily driven by disgust reactions, though he also has a long history of conspiracism. It seems unlikely that the Selz are motivated by political leanings, despite their wealth, as their previous philanthropy was largely aimed at progressive causes like the arts and the environment.
Another possibility is religious reasons, and this is where things are most complicated. Earlier this year, I argued that anti-transhumanist conspiracism in the gender critical movement was really laundered antisemitic conspiracism from Keith Woods, a literal Nazi. Woods argued that Jews are predisposed to support transhumanism because Jewish eschatology is aimed at turning humans into immortal beings in this material world. Setting aside the truth of that claim, how could we present an argument that the Selz’s are motivated to antivaxxerism by their religious beliefs, while avoiding Woods style antisemitism?
Again, the key is emphasising that Jews are not special in this regard. Researchers have found that parents typically cite one of four kinds of reasons for vaccine hesitancy: religious reasons, personal beliefs or philosophical reasons, safety concerns, and a desire for more information from healthcare providers. Many religious groups, including orthodox Jews, express higher rates of vaccine hesitancy for a range of reasons, from purity, to emphasising fertility, to belief in divine protection. If the Selz’s are motivated by their religious beliefs, it’s likely in the same ways they would have been if they were evangelical Christians.
Despite not knowing for sure which of these reasons actually motivated the Selz’s behavior, we’re still justified in believing it’s one of these reasons, rather than a malicious one, because of the real-world consequences for Jewish communities. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities suffered severe measles outbreaks in 2003, as well as in 2013 and 2018. Studies have found that ultra-Orthodox Israelis over 65 are dying from COVID at four times the rate of non-Haredi populations, and that religion is the central explanation for the difference and a potential key to the solution. Bigtree himself held a protest during the 2019 measles outbreak, arguing that people should be allowed to get measles if they want. It seems far more likely that the Selz’s simply agree with Bigtree and Wakefield than some undisclosed financial motivation, or even weirder some desire to see massive harm wrought upon Jewish communities.
Working in the conspiracism world, I often get asked “do these people really believe what they’re saying?”. Even amongst conspiracism trackers, the urge to wonder is unavoidable sometimes. But the answer is always the same: you can’t know, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is the knowable, predictable harm that their actions cause.
I’ve sometimes wondered if knowing whether a conspiracism promoter is a true believer could impact how we approach them tactically, but as far as I can tell it doesn’t matter, because it’s unlikely that the solution is going to be to change their minds. We’re better off just assuming everyone is a true believer and working to quarantine their message so that it can infect as few people as possible.
Inoculate others against the misinformation as best you can, but don’t get distracted wondering why some Jewish billionaires would cause so much harm to their own community, because the answer is the same as with any other billionaires: it doesn’t matter, all that matters is constraining their ability to cause harm.
With 2022 over and 2023 in its early days, many of us are looking forward nervously, wondering what this new year may bring. So, curious creature that I am, I attended a psychic seminar, which brought together the disciplines of astrology and tarot reading, to see what events we can expect to see in the coming months.
The event was put on by Consciousness Café, and featured Jessica Adams, a professional astrologer whose predictions have featured in tabloid newspapers and fashion magazines. In 2019, Adams told UK newspaper The Metro that, despite having been an astrologer for decades, she has only been wrong once – when she predicted Hillary Clinton would win the US presidential election in 2016. Wrong once in and entire career? It’s an impressive claim! Although a quick look at some of her previous predictions indicates that she’s wrong about that, having predicted that there will be no vaccine for COVID-19 and that Italy would leave the EU in 2021. But hey, no one is perfect.
So, along with over 500 others, I paid my £11 entrance fee and tuned in to find out what Adams had to say about the next few months. It’s fair to say that she had some big claims.
The structure of society will change.
Adams predicts the end of the 7-day week, and the end of working 9-5, 5 days a week is coming in 2023-24. This is because Pluto, which represents power, is about to go into Aquarius, which represents people. Not only will the old ways change, but women will rise up and lead the way. Adams mentioned that Pluto hasn’t been in Aquarius in 248 years, so we are going to see upheaval the likes of which we haven’t seen since 1774-75, which you history buffs may have already noticed was the period of the American revolutionary wars.
Adams predicts that trade unions will increase in number and power, and we can expect more strikes. These predictions can surely only be made by one who can read the future in the stars! Or by anyone who follows the news and has even a vague idea of what tends to happen when worker’s wages don’t keep pace with the cost of living and is aware that many of the strikes of the last few months haven’t resulted in workers and employers and/or the government coming to an agreement.
Charles will not be King…even though he already is.
Another of Adams’ bold claims is that Charles will not be King… even though he literally already is. Her reason for this prediction? In 1949 when Charles was one, Charles Carter – editor of Astrologist Quarterly at the Astrological Lodge of London – predicted that Charles will become king through abdication, or he will abdicate. Apparently, the sun is in opposition to Neptune in Charles’s chart, which means… something.
Adams draws on another historical prediction, this time from the observer magazine March 13th 1966, where Mr John G Williamson of the Metaphysical Research Group and the editor of Prediction Magazine and Mr Lewis Ackerman of Fate Magazine all agree: Prince Charles will never ascend the throne.
Adams is confident Charles will not be King, because, as mentioned before, Pluto is about to get all up in Aquarius, heralding an age that’s all about the people, not the old system. Her other reason for being so confident that Charles will not be coronated is that when Charles was being declared King, lots of stuff was in retrograde. The key time for all this upheaval, especially around the monarchy, is March 23 to June 23, so mark your diaries, something is going to happen at some point in that three-month period.
But it is not just the royal family that will see great upheaval in 2023, it’s the House of Lords too, as the old way of life comes to an end. This system where a small number of people at the top have all the money and all the power? That’s coming to an end in 2023, all because, you guessed it, Pluto is in Aquarius.
While Adams had much to say about King Charles never ascending to the throne that he is already on, only brief mention was made of the reason Charles can be king in the first place – the death of Queen Elizabeth II, in September 2022. This is something that did not appear in Adams’ list of predictions for 2022. The death of the UK’s longest reigning monarch, and the only one anyone living can remember, does seem a significant omission. However Adams had an explanation for this: she informed the audience that astrology shouldn’t or couldn’t be used to predict death. Adams did not explain how these tools can be used to predict that Charles won’t be crowned as planned, without also predicting the prerequisite death.
Rise in female power – Kamala Harris to be next president
Pluto going into Aquarius did a lot of heavy lifting in this session – apparently this alignment is very important because… reasons. Adams told us that line up tends to lead to an increase in women power. She feels that this means that Kamala Harris will be the next president of the USA.
Crypto and Covid
Adams predicts a new one world cryptocurrency is coming, and it will gain popularity around March to June 2023. Although I’m not entirely sure why – probably something to do with Pluto and Aquarius maybe?
On the subject of Covid, Adams warns that the worst is still to come! And it won’t be until 2026 that we start to see a real improvement. We’ve got to just learn to live with it… “like AIDS”. It all depends on the constellation of Aquarius. Aquarius is the only constellation that sends out UVC light, and that kills covid. While there is evidence that UV light can be used as an environmental disinfectant, it’s efficiency is proportional to the power of the source of UV light, and inversely proportion to the distance between the source and the target area and while the brightest star in Aquarius is pretty big, it’s also approximately 520 light years away from us, which is pretty far.
Victory for Ukraine
A big chunk of the session was dedicated to pulling out tarot cards for each astrological sign and telling us all what they mean for the year ahead, so I’m not going to cover that because, frankly, it was vague, boring and repetitive. However, there were two moments of note: firstly, Adams presented the sun card and announced the card was Ukraine, and that other psychics in the audience may have already picked up that this card is Ukraine. That’s because, she explained, it is Ukraine’s colours: blue and yellow (if you ignore the orange flag and white horse). She also drew our attention to the sunflowers on the card – the symbol of Ukraine. But, again, she ignored the naked child or cherub on a white horse, which was also on the card. She then said that she believed Ukraine will win the war in 2023, because the card said so, I guess.
Those who did not have their own tarot deck in front of them were encouraged to pull their own card using a virtual 12 card deck on Adams’ website. Sadly, hundreds of viewers all simultaneously shuffling these virtual cards appeared to be too much for the site, and many complained that it completely crashed and failed to provide them with their own personal peek into the future. It was not clear how the powers of planets were so easily thwarted.
In conclusion, I’d like to add one prediction of my own (perhaps this psychic stuff is contagious): over the next 12 months, Skeptics will continue to be faced with pseudoscience, woo and general nonsense, and unless you become The Hermit, you will encounter The Fool.
So, pick up your sword – or Occam’s razor – and keep your cup filled with compassion as you continue to encounter others with dubious opinions and beliefs, because, unfortunately, there is no wand for spreading reason.
With thanks to Emma McClure, for her additional contributions to this article.
