Author Archives: Justin Whang

Did Kurt Cobain Fake His Death and Become Rivers Cuomo of Weezer?

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As with any major celebrity death, the suicide of Kurt Cobain led to many conspiracy theories claiming that things weren’t what they appeared to be. Although many of these theories assume foul play and point a finger at Courtney Love, claiming that he was really murdered, some more obscure theories assert that Kurt Cobain didn’t die at all. Rather, he was looking for a change as he was unhappy with the direction things were going with Nirvana.

One variation of the “Kurt Cobain is still alive” conspiracy theory is that he actually changed his identity and became Rivers Cuomo of the band Weezer. Believers of this theory point to a surprising amount of facial similarities between Rivers Cuomo and Kurt Cobain. They also point to Rivers’ obsession with Nirvana, and particularly in Kurt’s writing and song structure, which he’s known to have broken down and analyzed at great length. Another point that they bring up is that although Weezer formed while Nirvana was still around, their tour dates never overlapped, meaning that perhaps Cobain was already leading a double life.

Do these facts add up? Find out in this video: Conspiracy Theory: Is Kurt Cobain Really Rivers Cuomo?

Breaking News! How Bernie Sanders Can Still Become President!

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It’s no secret that a lot of people are unsatisfied with the election results in 2016. Many people feel that the democratic primary was stolen from Bernie Sanders. Through every primary loss, many people were doing the math on how Bernie Sanders could still defeat Hillary. After the math become impossible for him, many still had theories about how Bernie Sanders could become the democratic nominee instead of Hillary.

The primaries came and went with Hillary as the nominee. Even after his concession, there were those who thought Bernie Sanders could still become president in 2016. It was very disappointing to those people when Hillary lost to Donald Trump. Those loyal to Bernie believe that Sanders could have easily become president against Trump.

Well, don’t be alarmed! There is still hope! Just check out this video to find out exactly how it is still possible for Bernie Sanders to become president of the United States of America in 2016!

Resident Evil Dual Shock: Worst Soundtrack Ever?

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resident-evil-directors-cut-dualshock-psx_usIf there’s one thing the Dual Shock Edition of Resident Evil: Director’s Cut is famous for, it is probably its horrific, cacophonous soundtrack consisting of some of the worst horn sounds that a Casio Rap Man keyboard can muster. However, the story behind the soundtrack is perhaps even more compelling than its fart-like bugle sounds.

Capcom has always been famous for releasing countless iterations of its successful titles, and its runaway hit, Resident Evil, was no exception. The original Director’s Cut was a fun variation on the original game, remixing some of the item locations, adding new options and adding new costumes. However, shortly after the release of the original Resident Evil: Director’s Cut, Sony introduced force feedback in its new Dual Shock Analog Controller. Capcom was sure to release yet another new version of the game in order to capitalize on this new piece of hardware.

This time around, Capcom had an offer to have the soundtrack to its new Resident Evil game composed by a rising star in the Japanese classical musical scene, Mamoru Samuragochi. Samuragochi was a composer who was being dubbed “Japan’s Beethoven.” This moniker was related not only to his level of skill, but also due to him being a deaf composer.

The truth would come out in 2014. Not only was Mamoru Samuragochi faking his deafness, but he was also having the majority of his compositions ghostwritten. In particular, a musician by the name of Takashi Niigaki wrote most of his pieces. Pieces written by Niigaki included the infamous soundtrack to Resident Evil: Director’s Cut Dual Shock Edition.

Next time you’re listening to the Resident Evil: Director’s Cut Dual Shock Edition soundtrack and saying to yourself “I can’t believe somebody was paid to write this,” remind yourself: a person paid another person for the honor of being able to pretend to have written this.

Links:

Buy Resident Evil: Director’s Cut Dual Shock: http://amzn.to/2g4gp82

Starbucks Christmas Cups and Other Fake Buzzfeed Stories

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Abstarbucksout a year ago, the world was thrown into chaos when a ridiculous story about coffee cups made the headlines. According to Buzzfeed and websites of similar reputations, some nutty Christians were furious that Starbucks decided to change its annual Christmas cups into secular “holiday” cups with an ugly red gradient. IT’S A WAR ON CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!

I had no idea that people cared so much about cups. I never heard about anybody looking forward to Starbucks’ annual Christmas tradition. Probably because they fucking didn’t. You see, this story was cobbled together by digging hard to find the tiny handful of angry tweets that existed and blowing them up into seeming like there was a big movement going on. There was literally one or two accounts that were used as a basis for this story in the beginning, one of which had an egg avatar. Completely inconsequential.

However, for sites like Buzzfeed, the truth doesn’t matter. What matters is manufacturing enough controversy to get people to click and share. These writers make all of their money from ad revenue, so it’s in their best interest to write the stories that will best generate engagement, even if they have little justification.

Sure enough, the Starbucks Christmas Cup story reared its head once again in 2016. This time, the problem is with green cups. Buzzfeed News now had a few more tweets to choose from. Hilariously, the top tweet that they chose to showcase was one from a Twitter user by the name of @JazzHandd that was actually sarcastically poking fun at last year’s fracas. Hopefully, she manages to stave off the inevitable harassment campaign from people who are too invested in being outraged to see that they are being conned.

Another example of this is the #BoycottStarWarsVII “movement.” I placed the word “movement” in quotation marks because once again, this hash tag can be credited to a tiny handful of cherry-picked tweets that most likely came from troll accounts. Of course, the clickbait junk peddlers ran with the story because racist drama is big money nowadays.

There was also the case of white Twitter “exploding” over Bomani Jones’ Caucasians jersey, a cute stab at the controversy over the Cleveland Indians’ logo. It’s a pretty interesting story on its own, but to really bring in the clicks, hack writers had to use Twitter accounts with 15 followers to invent an angle about white outrage.

Writers for Buzzfeed and its ilk need to be held accountable for constantly inventing something out of nothing. They are actively profiting from making the world a worse, more hateful place.

-Justin

PS: If this topic interests you, you might like Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday.