PRICES ARE FIRM UNLESS BUNDLED
Collections:
Leprechaun 7-Film Collection (HD) (Vudu)- $20
Ouija 1+2 (HD) (MA)- $10
The Santa Clause Trilogy (HD) (MA)- $15
MA/Vudu 4K Codes- $8 Each:
A League of their Own
Avengers: Endgame
Casino
Christine
Coming to America
Dragged Across Concrete
Frozen
Ghost in the Shell (1996)
The Incredible Hulk
Jaws
Jerry Maguire
Knives Out
The Magnificent Seven
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
The Matrix
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Overlord
Philadelphia
Psycho
The Purge
Requiem for a Dream
Skyscraper
Thor: Ragnarok
~~Whiplash~~
Disney GP HD Codes (Ports to MA)- $5 Each:
Frozen 2
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Disney GP HD Codes (Ports to MA)- $4 Each:
Avengers: Endgame
Black Panther
Captain Marvel
Finding Dory
Frozen
Inside Out
The Lion King (1994)
The Lion King (2019)
Mary Poppins Returns
Moana
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man Tell No Tales
Ralph Breaks the Internet
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Thor
Thor: Ragnarok
iTunes 4K Codes (Ports to MA)- $6 Each:
Deadpool
The Mummy (2017)
iTunes 4K Codes (Don't Port to MA)- $5 Each:
American Assassin
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Overlord
Pet Sematary (1989)
Star Trek: Into the Darkness
Terminator: Genisys
Zoolander 2 (HD)
iTunes HD Codes (Ports to MA)- $5 Each
Nocturnal Animals
Suffragette
Trumbo
MA/Vudu HD Codes- $5 Each:
Blockers
The Dark Knight Rises
Hannibal: Season 1
Jurassic Park
The Purge: Anarchy
Sleepless
Superman: Man of Tomorrow
Superman: Red Son
Taken 2
Triple 9
The Witch
World War Z
GP HD Codes (Don't Port to MA)- $5
Ingrid Goes West
The Lobster
PayPal only, please

I’m not sure if this needs a trigger warning or not but I’ll toss it up there anyway.
Lately I’ve been having dreams about the casino, in one dream my sponsor is driving a tour bus with a plan to hit every casino and dog track the northern hemisphere. There other people on the bus, my bank manager, the executor of my parents estate; who controls my money and a lot of people I have to make amends to.
In the dream we never actually make it to the casinos or track, instead we sing show tunes, tell jokes and share our stories.
In another dream I’m locked in the casino, with no money, no other people just me and all the tables and machines, but I can’t do anything or escape.

Payment by paypal friends and family only; 4K redemption spreadsheet
If a Disney release comes with Disney Movie Rewards points, it will be indicated.
Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2 HD MA - $9
Annihilation 4K iTunes/FN/Vudu - $7
Ant-Man 4K MA - $12
Arrival 4K iTunes/Vudu/FN - $7
Avengers Age of Ultron HD MA - $6
Avengers Age of Ultron 4K MA - $11
Avengers Infinity War 4K MA - $11
Avengers Endgame 4K MA - $12
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood 4K MA - $12
Ben Hur (2016) HD Vudu/FN/iTunes - $4
The Bourne Legacy 4K MA - $5.50
Captain Marvel 4K MA - $9
Casino Royale 4K Vudu - $9
Charlie's Angels (2000) 4K MA - $6.50
The Counselor HD MA - $3
Deadpool HD MA - $3
Death Wish (2018) HD MA - $3.50
Despicable Me 3 4K MA - $6.50
The Expendables 3 HD iTunes/FN/Vudu - $3
Escape Plan HD FN/Vudu - $2
Escape Plan 4K FN/Vudu - $5
The Fate of the Furious 4K MA - $7
Field of Dreams 4K MA - $7
Finding Dory HD MA - $5
Finding Dory 4K MA (with DMR) - $10
Finding Nemo 4K MA (with DMR) - $10
Game of Thrones Season 1 HD iTunes - $3
Guardians of the Galaxy 4K MA - $12
Hellboy (2004) 4K MA - $7
Hotel Transylvania 3 4K MA - $7.50
Hustlers HD iTunes - $6
Instant Family HD iTunes/Vudu/FN - $3.50
Iron Man 4K MA - $12
Iron Man 2 4K MA - $10
Iron Man 3 4K MA - $12
It Chapter 2 4K MA - $9
It’s a Wonderful Life 4K Vudu/FN - $9
John Wick HD iTunes/Vudu/GP/FN - $2.50
Joker 4K MA - $11
The Jungle Book 2016 HD MA - $5
Krampus HD MA - $3.50
La La Land 4K Vudu/FN - $7
The Last Witch Hunter 4K Vudu/FN - $6
Lion King (2019) 4K MA (with DMR) - $11
Men in Black International 4K MA - $7
Mission Impossible 2 HD iTunes - $4
Mission Impossible 3 HD iTunes - $4
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation HD Itunes - $4
Noah HD iTunes/FN/Vudu - $3
Office Christmas Party HD iTunes/Vudu/FN - $3
Oz: The Great and Powerful HD MA - $3.50
Parasite HD MA - $11
Patriot's Day 4K FN/Vudu - $7
Pet Sematary 2019 4K MA - $7
Rambo First Blood 4K FN/Vudu - $7
Rambo (2008) 4K Vudu - $6.50
Robin Hood (2018) 4K MA - $6.50
Snitch 4K Vudu/FN - $6
Spider-Man Homecoming 4K MA - $12
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows HD iTunes/FN/Vudu - $3
Thor 4K MA - $11
Thor The Dark World 4K MA - $10
Toy Story 4 4K MA (with DMR) - $11
xXx The Return of Xander Cage 4K FN/Vudu - $6.50

There I was standing at the entrance of a magnificent casino with huge lights, it was a red carpet entrance and I amongst three nameless others were the stars. The brilliant flashes and popping of the cameras of yesteryear seemed endless. Dazzling attire and marvelous sights, bright neons and the search light bouncing around the sky marking our location, all filled the air with a very exciting atmosphere.
Walking along the what appeared to be a long endless corridor crowded with people one chap with a top hat stopped and asked me "Good day sir, what brings you to tonights festivities?" Cooley slipping my sunglasses on I said In my best Jack Nicholson impersonation "The Cocaine". Taken aback the man seemed stunned at my public claim for drug usage but regained his composure. As I was stepping away I could faintly hear him yell out from the crowd "..but I do admire your honesty!"
It was apparent I was important. But who, I did not know. And why? suddenly it occurred to me I had a female companion, not a date but a friend, perhaps a co-worker or collaborator on whatever thing got us here.
She was trying to get the attention of a man, he didn't hear her over the constant roar of the crowd, but as one of his friends following behind passed us I made sure she got an introduction. Off she went With the men, presumably to enjoy the atmosphere, I watched her disappear into the crowd smiling, laughing....
Then it happened. The crowd went silent and in unison did a 180 degree turn and put masks on. All matching in step, the floor falling out to a void of oblivion behind us there was a sense that everyone knew something I did not yet I knew I must play along. "yes, I must follow this crowd because they knew what to do and when, without so much as a alarm!" I thought.
A monotone voice came over a PA system: "ALL must report to their perspective flights, they will be sealed off"
And suddenly I knew what would happen if I was sealed into a vessel. I would be gassed! They were getting rid of us! I broke free of the crowd and ran to the highest portion of the building I could find. Up an endless flight of escalators the floor now periodically falling out in front of me, and having to react quickly, jumping to solid floor to avoid falling through the random openings.
Suddenly, I was back at the time previously mentioned with my female companion. I watched her face laughing and smiling and disappear into the crowd...I knew what was coming next, a heavy pit filled my stomach. Then it came. The silence, the 180 degree turn, the masks, the marching. I did not comply...
I watched as the others marched passed me. The floor fell out into nothing, I jumped in. I fell into an endless hole of what appeared to occasionally have stone walls, geometric shapes, horns and shadows. Grabbing for anything I could only made the fall more violent, tossing me upside down and disorienting me into a state of vomit and a level of sickness not perceivable to the human psyche. Suddenly the bottom. .. No impact, just sand, forming slowly around me, swallowing any memory or thought along with my body. When it all went black I entered what was a new life. What I experienced was just a game, I knew this, it was not explained it was more of a understanding. I took the virtual reality headset off and ascended to the top of the same hole by way of elevator that I had just moments ago fallen for so long.
I reach the top and everything is white tile with blue glowing edges. . . Where do I go?
Then I wake up (THE END)

Payment by paypal friends and family only; 4K redemption spreadsheet
If a Disney release comes with Disney Movie Rewards points, it will be indicated.
Alien Covenant 4K MA/iTunes/Vudu/GP - $6.50
Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2 HD MA - $9
Annihilation 4K iTunes/FN/Vudu - $7
Ant-Man 4K MA - $12
Arrival 4K iTunes/Vudu/FN - $7
Avengers Age of Ultron HD MA - $6
Avengers Age of Ultron 4K MA - $11
Avengers Infinity War 4K MA - $11
Avengers Endgame 4K MA - $12
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood 4K MA - $12
Ben Hur (2016) HD Vudu/FN/iTunes - $4
The Bourne Legacy 4K MA - $5.50
Captain Marvel 4K MA - $9
Casino Royale 4K Vudu - $10
Charlie's Angels (2000) 4K MA - $6.50
Cold Pursuit 4K Vudu/FN - $6.50
The Counselor HD MA - $3
Deadpool HD MA - $3
Death Wish (2018) HD MA - $3.50
Despicable Me 3 4K MA - $6.50
The Expendables 3 HD iTunes/FN/Vudu - $3
Escape Plan HD FN/Vudu - $2
Escape Plan 4K FN/Vudu - $5
The Fate of the Furious 4K MA - $7
Field of Dreams 4K MA - $7
Finding Dory HD MA - $5
Finding Dory 4K MA (with DMR) - $10
Finding Nemo 4K MA (with DMR) - $10
Game of Thrones Season 1 HD iTunes - $3
Game of Thrones Season 2 HD iTunes - $3
Game of Thrones Season 8 HD iTunes - $10
Glory 4K MA - $8
The Good Dinosaur 4K MA - $8
Guardians of the Galaxy 4K MA - $12
Hellboy (2004) 4K MA - $7
Hotel Transylvania 3 4K MA - $7.50
Hustlers HD iTunes - $6
Instant Family HD iTunes/Vudu/FN - $3.50
Iron Man 4K MA - $12
Iron Man 2 4K MA - $10
Iron Man 3 4K MA - $12
It Chapter 2 4K MA - $9
It’s a Wonderful Life 4K Vudu/FN - $9
John Wick HD iTunes/Vudu/GP/FN - $2.50
Joker 4K MA - $11
The Jungle Book 2016 HD MA - $5
The Karate Kid 4K MA - $6.50
Krampus HD MA - $3.50
La La Land 4K Vudu/FN - $7
The Last Witch Hunter 4K Vudu/FN - $6
Lion King (2019) 4K MA (with DMR) - $11
Maleficent Mistress of Evil 4K MA (with DMR) - $12
Men in Black International 4K MA - $7
Mission Impossible 2 HD iTunes - $4
Mission Impossible 3 HD iTunes - $4
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation HD Itunes - $4
Moana 4K MA (with DMR) - $10
Noah HD iTunes/FN/Vudu - $3
Office Christmas Party HD iTunes/Vudu/FN - $3
The Old Man and the Gun HD MA - $4.50
Oz: The Great and Powerful HD MA - $3.50
Parasite HD MA - $11
Patriot's Day 4K FN/Vudu - $7
Pet Sematary 2019 4K MA - $7
Rambo First Blood 4K FN/Vudu - $7
Rambo (2008) 4K Vudu - $6.50
Robin Hood (2018) 4K MA - $6.50
The Shallows 4K MA - $7
Snitch 4K Vudu/FN - $6
Spider-Man Homecoming 4K MA - $12
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows HD iTunes/FN/Vudu - $3
Thor 4K MA - $11
Thor The Dark World 4K MA - $10
Thor Ragnarok 4K MA - $12
Toy Story 4 4K MA (with DMR) - $11
X-Men Dark Phoenix 4K MA - $8
xXx The Return of Xander Cage 4K FN/Vudu - $6.50
Zootopia 4K MA (with DMR) - $10

Payment by paypal friends and family only; 4K redemption spreadsheet
If a Disney release comes with Disney Movie Rewards points, it will be indicated.
Alien Covenant 4K MA/iTunes/Vudu/GP - $6.50
Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2 HD MA - $9
Annihilation 4K iTunes/FN/Vudu - $7
Ant-Man 4K MA - $12
Arrival 4K iTunes/Vudu/FN - $7
Avengers Age of Ultron HD MA - $6
Avengers Age of Ultron 4K MA - $11
Avengers Infinity War 4K MA - $11
Avengers Endgame 4K MA - $12
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood 4K MA - $12
Ben Hur (2016) HD Vudu/FN/iTunes - $4
The Bourne Legacy 4K MA - $5.50
Captain Marvel 4K MA - $9
Casino Royale 4K Vudu - $10
Charlie's Angels (2000) 4K MA - $6.50
Cold Pursuit 4K Vudu/FN - $6.50
The Counselor HD MA - $3
Deadpool HD MA - $3
Death Wish (2018) HD MA - $3.50
Despicable Me 3 4K MA - $6.50
The Expendables 3 HD iTunes/FN/Vudu - $3
Escape Plan HD FN/Vudu - $2
Escape Plan 4K FN/Vudu - $5
The Fate of the Furious 4K MA - $7
Field of Dreams 4K MA - $7
Finding Dory HD MA - $5
Finding Dory 4K MA (with DMR) - $10
Finding Nemo 4K MA (with DMR) - $10
Game of Thrones Season 1 HD iTunes - $3
Glory 4K MA - $7
Guardians of the Galaxy 4K MA - $12
Hellboy (2004) 4K MA - $7
Hotel Transylvania 3 4K MA - $7.50
Hustlers HD iTunes - $6
Instant Family HD iTunes/Vudu/FN - $3.50
Iron Man 4K MA - $12
Iron Man 2 4K MA - $10
Iron Man 3 4K MA - $12
It Chapter 2 4K MA - $9
It’s a Wonderful Life 4K Vudu/FN - $9
John Wick HD iTunes/Vudu/GP/FN - $2.50
Joker 4K MA - $11
The Jungle Book 2016 HD MA - $5
Krampus HD MA - $3.50
La La Land 4K Vudu/FN - $7
The Last Witch Hunter 4K Vudu/FN - $6
Lion King (2019) 4K MA (with DMR) - $11
Maleficent Mistress of Evil 4K MA (with DMR) - $12
Men in Black International 4K MA - $7
Mission Impossible 2 HD iTunes - $4
Mission Impossible 3 HD iTunes - $4
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation HD Itunes - $4
Moana 4K MA (with DMR) - $10
Noah HD iTunes/FN/Vudu - $3
Office Christmas Party HD iTunes/Vudu/FN - $3
Oz: The Great and Powerful HD MA - $3.50
Parasite HD MA - $11
Patriot's Day 4K FN/Vudu - $7
Pet Sematary 2019 4K MA - $7
Rambo First Blood 4K FN/Vudu - $7
Rambo (2008) 4K Vudu - $6.50
Robin Hood (2018) 4K MA - $6.50
The Shallows 4K MA - $7
Snitch 4K Vudu/FN - $6
Spider-Man Homecoming 4K MA - $12
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows HD iTunes/FN/Vudu - $3
Thor 4K MA - $11
Thor The Dark World 4K MA - $10
Thor Ragnarok 4K MA - $12
Toy Story 4 4K MA (with DMR) - $11
X-Men Dark Phoenix 4K MA - $8
xXx The Return of Xander Cage 4K FN/Vudu - $6.50
Zootopia 4K MA (with DMR) - $10

Payment by paypal friends and family only; 4K redemption spreadsheet
If a Disney release comes with Disney Movie Rewards points, it will be indicated.
Annihilation 4K iTunes/FN/Vudu - $7
Ant-Man 4K MA - $12
Arrival 4K iTunes/Vudu/FN - $7
Avengers Age of Ultron HD MA - $6
Avengers Age of Ultron 4K MA - $11
Avengers Infinity War 4K MA - $11
Avengers Endgame 4K MA - $12
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood 4K MA - $10
Ben Hur (2016) HD Vudu/FN/iTunes - $4
The Bourne Legacy 4K MA - $5.50
Captain Marvel 4K MA - $9
Charlie's Angels (2000) 4K MA - $6.50
The Counselor HD MA - $3
Deadpool HD MA - $3
Death Wish (2018) HD MA - $3.50
Despicable Me 3 4K MA - $6.50
Escape Plan HD FN/Vudu - $2
Escape Plan 4K FN/Vudu - $5
The Fate of the Furious 4K MA - $7
Finding Dory HD MA - $5
Finding Dory 4K MA (with DMR) - $10
Finding Nemo 4K MA (with DMR) - $10
Game of Thrones Season 1 HD iTunes - $3
Guardians of the Galaxy 4K MA - $12
Hellboy (2004) 4K MA - $7
Hotel Transylvania 3 4K MA - $7.50
Hustlers HD iTunes - $6
Instant Family HD iTunes/Vudu/FN - $3.50
Iron Man 4K MA - $12
Iron Man 2 4K MA - $10
Iron Man 3 4K MA - $12
It Chapter 2 4K MA - $9
It’s a Wonderful Life 4K Vudu/FN - $9
John Wick HD iTunes/Vudu/GP/FN - $2.50
Joker 4K MA - $10
The Jungle Book 2016 HD MA - $4
Krampus HD MA - $3.50
La La Land 4K Vudu/FN - $7
The Last Witch Hunter 4K Vudu/FN - $6
Lion King (2019) 4K MA (with DMR) - $11
Men in Black International 4K MA - $7
Mission Impossible 2 HD iTunes - $4
Mission Impossible 3 HD iTunes - $4
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation HD Itunes - $4
Noah HD iTunes/FN/Vudu - $3
Office Christmas Party HD iTunes/Vudu/FN - $3
Oz: The Great and Powerful HD MA - $3.50
Parasite HD MA - $10
Patriot's Day 4K FN/Vudu - $6.50
Pet Sematary 2019 4K MA - $7
Rambo First Blood 4K FN/Vudu - $7
Rambo (2008) 4K Vudu - $6.50
Robin Hood (2018) 4K MA - $6.50
Snitch 4K Vudu/FN - $6
Spider-Man Homecoming 4K MA - $12
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows HD iTunes/FN/Vudu - $3
Thor 4K MA - $11
Thor The Dark World 4K MA - $10
Toy Story 4 4K MA (with DMR) - $11
xXx The Return of Xander Cage 4K FN/Vudu - $6.50

Payment by paypal friends and family only; 4K redemption spreadsheet
If a Disney release comes with Disney Movie Rewards points, it will be indicated.
Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2 HD MA - $9
Annihilation 4K iTunes/FN/Vudu - $7
Ant-Man 4K MA - $12
Arrival 4K iTunes/Vudu/FN - $7
Avengers Age of Ultron HD MA - $6
Avengers Age of Ultron 4K MA - $11
Avengers Infinity War 4K MA - $11
Avengers Endgame 4K MA - $12
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood 4K MA - $12
Ben Hur (2016) HD Vudu/FN/iTunes - $4
The Bourne Legacy 4K MA - $5.50
Captain Marvel 4K MA - $9
Casino Royale 4K Vudu - $10
Charlie's Angels (2000) 4K MA - $6.50
Cold Pursuit 4K Vudu/FN - $6.50
The Counselor HD MA - $3
Deadpool HD MA - $3
Death Wish (2018) HD MA - $3.50
Despicable Me 3 4K MA - $6.50
The Expendables 3 HD iTunes/FN/Vudu - $3
Escape Plan HD FN/Vudu - $2
Escape Plan 4K FN/Vudu - $5
The Fate of the Furious 4K MA - $7
Field of Dreams 4K MA - $7
Finding Dory HD MA - $5
Finding Dory 4K MA (with DMR) - $10
Finding Nemo 4K MA (with DMR) - $10
Game of Thrones Season 1 HD iTunes - $3
Glory 4K MA - $7
Guardians of the Galaxy 4K MA - $12
Hellboy (2004) 4K MA - $7
Hotel Transylvania 3 4K MA - $7.50
Hustlers HD iTunes - $6
Instant Family HD iTunes/Vudu/FN - $3.50
Iron Man 4K MA - $12
Iron Man 2 4K MA - $10
Iron Man 3 4K MA - $12
It Chapter 2 4K MA - $9
It’s a Wonderful Life 4K Vudu/FN - $9
John Wick HD iTunes/Vudu/GP/FN - $2.50
Joker 4K MA - $11
The Jungle Book 2016 HD MA - $5
Krampus HD MA - $3.50
La La Land 4K Vudu/FN - $7
The Last Witch Hunter 4K Vudu/FN - $6
Lion King (2019) 4K MA (with DMR) - $11
Men in Black International 4K MA - $7
Mission Impossible 2 HD iTunes - $4
Mission Impossible 3 HD iTunes - $4
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation HD Itunes - $4
Noah HD iTunes/FN/Vudu - $3
Office Christmas Party HD iTunes/Vudu/FN - $3
Oz: The Great and Powerful HD MA - $3.50
Parasite HD MA - $11
Patriot's Day 4K FN/Vudu - $7
Pet Sematary 2019 4K MA - $7
Rambo First Blood 4K FN/Vudu - $7
Rambo (2008) 4K Vudu - $6.50
Robin Hood (2018) 4K MA - $6.50
The Shallows 4K MA - $7
Snitch 4K Vudu/FN - $6
Spider-Man Homecoming 4K MA - $12
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows HD iTunes/FN/Vudu - $3
Thor 4K MA - $11
Thor The Dark World 4K MA - $10
Toy Story 4 4K MA (with DMR) - $11
X-Men Dark Phoenix 4K MA - $8
xXx The Return of Xander Cage 4K FN/Vudu - $6.50

I had a dream last night but didn't remember it until hours after I woke up when it just popped into my head as an image. Took me a minute to remember that it was a from a dream and not a memory of something I'd seen in a piece of art or a movie. Took me a while longer to pull the rest of the dream from my memory. It was really simple, but here's what happened and the analysis I came up with. I'd like to hear what some other people think about it.
My husband and I were on a road trip and I was aimlessly looking out the window at the scenery going by. Driving is a recurring theme in my dreams, and usually the roads are like hot wheels tracks from hell complete with loops and narrow sideless bridges that are hundreds of feet off the ground. Driving dreams are a pretty common anxiety dream for me. Most likely related to the real life fear of driving I had before I actually learned to do it. I'm still not sure if these dreams were the cause or just a symptom of that fear.
But this dream didn't make me nervous at all. I watched out the window in quiet peace as the vast plains passed by. The calm may have been because my husband was the one driving. In my interpretation I took this as proof that I trust him even in my subconscious.
I've recently come to the conclusion that one of the biggest things that holds me back from doing what I want in life is fear, so I made the decision to cultivate courage. I think this dream may be related to that decision.
So I interpreted this dream as my subconscious telling me that he might be a part of finding my courage. Up until this, I looked at this task as a solo one. Now I'm thinking that I shouldn't be hesitant about letting him be a source of courage.
As we drove along the sun began to set making the whole landscape glow with warm reds and purples. We came to a wide sweeping curve and in the middle of it, I saw an impressive building. The first floor was one huge room with floor to cileiling, wall to wall glass. The first floor alone had to be over 5 stories tall. And looking into the glass, silhouetted by the sunset, I saw an casino. In the dream, I remember being roused from my calm in awe of how impressive the building was.
In the dream I remember telling my husband to look and he was also impressed. I told him I thought it was sad that the great outpouring of human labor and ingenuity had been wasted on a building just made for gambling, to take money away from people.
Looking back at this part, the two words that immediately jump to mind are "transparent risk" as a result of the glass and casino. But I don't really know where to go from there. I'm not sure if the dream was showing me my inate distaste for risk taking even if the risk is known and understood. But everything inside was silouhhetted by the sun, which tells me that I understand a risk can never be full understood, even if illuminated. And this was a building literally built on risk. The ground floor was a casino, supporting the rest of the building which didn't have these vast windows.
We drove past and came to another impressive building. Taller and wider than any skyscraper I've ever seen. The top of it looked vaguely similar to an art deco building near where I live. Stone with small uniform windows. It dwarfed me and I felt an indescribable awe, even more than I felt at the first building.
But I also felt conflicted. I'm a bit of a ludite and even more of an anti authoritarian. I don't like large hierarchical organizing structures. I don't play the social games needed to fit into that kind of structure. I dislike it on a philosophical and personal level. But I knew inately that this building which had inspired so much emotion in me was the result of that kind of organization and those social situations I fear.
I've been hesitant to pursue a specific goal of mine because I know it means playing social games and engaging in social media regularly. Social media, apart from reddit, is something I despise taking part in. So I'm thinking my subconsious is saying grin and bear it. You'll be in awe of the results even if you detest the process. I know this is where most of my fear lies.
So taken altogether here's my interpretation. I need to find the courage to take risks. I should look as closely as I can at those risks, knowing that I can never know the full consequences of any risk. And if I want to achieve my goals I should be willing to play the kind of social games that I hate. If I want to build anything of any significance I have to accept these two things. And with my husband by my side for support, I can find the courage to do so.
Am I missing or misinterpreting anything? What do you think.

I know, everyone is tired of hearing about Gamestop, but this was something I came across that I thought was actually quite well written and pretty spot on with most of the anger driven rhetoric I've seen on Reddit.
I've copy/pasted because I know most of y'all don't have Bloomberg subscriptions.

Traders putting on the short squeeze aren’t motivated by greed. They’re engaged in an anger-driven uprising against the establishment.
Anger Is an Energy
The saga of GameStop Corp. continues. By the end of another frenetic day of trading Tuesday, the stock had just topped its high from Monday. Between those peaks, it staged a fall of more than 50% on Monday afternoon. Colleagues have followed these extraordinary developments as they happened. I will try for now simply to process the single most important question: Is this just a weird technical situation, of the kind that comes along every few years, that can otherwise be safely ignored? Or does it tell us something important about market conditions as a whole?
GameStop's share price surged back to set a new high Purely qualitatively, based on what I have witnessed, I think it does matter. The signal it sends is disquieting, if not surprising. It also introduces us to a new variant on an ancient market phenomenon.
The cliche is that market capitalism works on the balance between greed and fear. The standard defense is as follows: If the greed to make money by beating the competition is matched by a fear of failure through making too many mistakes or cutting corners, then capitalism works. Nothing else yet discovered gives people such an incentive to work and create growth. Speculative bubbles happen when greed becomes excessive, or when fear diminishes too much. Easy money and easier trading with derivatives oil these emotions and allow them to run riot. The financial crisis of 2008 happened in large part because years of policy had convinced investors that there would be a bailout if they failed; they lost their fear, and greed took over.
This feeds into the debate over whether we have a speculative bubble at present. Markets are pervaded by gloom and worry, so there is no lack of fear — even if confidence that interest rates will never rise is growing excessive. Meanwhile, there is little in the way of greed. Cryptocurrency has generated excitement, as has Tesla Inc., but in the main the frenzy over a historic opportunity to get rich, of the kind that was everywhere in 1999, is lacking. This is a different, worried world. The last two decades have stripped it of its positivity. The mood is nothing like the great bubbles of the past.
Instead of greed, this latest bout of speculation, and especially the extraordinary excitement at GameStop, has a different emotional driver: anger. The people investing today are driven by righteous anger, about generational injustice, about what they see as the corruption and unfairness of the way banks were bailed out in 2008 without having to pay legal penalties later, and about lacerating poverty and inequality. This makes it unlike any of the speculative rallies and crashes that have preceded it.
On Monday, I argued that it was misplaced to take pleasure at the pain for the short-sellers who had attacked GameStop stock, and then been subjected to a “short squeeze” for the ages by traders coordinating on Reddit. I received a bumper crop of feedback. Here are some representative samples (leaving out many with unprintable expletives):

“You kind of miss the point of what is going on with GameStop. How much did Melvin pay you to write this garbage? shill. Literally trying to protect an industry trying to fleece jobs from low income workers. Sleep well chump.”
“Watching entitled institutional shorts whine on TV and OP EDs that millennials equipped with margin accounts & zero fees are collaborating on Reddit to target them is my new favorite sport. Looks perfectly healthy from where I'm sitting, which is on bull side :) plus 1 for the little guys.”
“Normal isn't putting the retail trader down for being independent while organized hedge funds force you to take their way or suffer in fear. Normal is the American dream and being able to make your own way. This isn't a casino. This is a riot.”

One respondent warned that the people squeezing the shorts aren’t “a herd of impressionable youngsters with Robinhood accounts. No. They are an experienced & ruthless army of insomniacs followed by a silent legion of rapidly learning new traders. This is a new paradigm that won’t go away.”
Another told me I was a “dumb boomer” amid a screed of unprintable epithets. (Point of information: I’m just too young to be a boomer. I’m in Generation X, but it’s the intergenerational antagonism that’s noteworthy.) Another said that the short squeeze was just a way for millennials to recoup the money they had been forced to pay to bankers during the TARP rescue 12 years ago, and to put coronavirus relief checks to work:

“In other words, poor people have too much money and are now controlling the narrative. Damn those $1200 stimulus checks and $600 unemployment supplements. Too much liquidity, let's get these folks back to living paycheck to paycheck.”
“I know. Democratisation of the market is so damned inconvenient for those of us with money.”
“nobody cares about your hedge fund cronies!”
“Bloomberg defending the suits. Not surprised. They’re just mad the rubes are in on the joke now. Might this force the Fed’s hand? Too many regular people in on the game.”

This is all fascinating. In the space of 12 years, the role of the short-seller has turned on its head. Back in 2008, it was the shorts who upset the status quo, revealed what was rotten in the state of Wall Street, and brought down the big shots. They were even the heroes of a big movie. It was the Wall Streeters who attacked them.
Alienation has deepened since then. Short-selling hedge funds are now seen as part of a corrupt establishment, as is the media. The motives of anyone defending the shorts, or anyone wearing a suit, must be suspect. And there is a deep generational divide; those unable to own their own home and forced to rely on defined contribution pensions have a stunningly unfair deal compared to those a generation older, living in mortgage-free homes with guaranteed pensions. That percolates into anger, and a determination to right the scales by making money at the expense of corrupt short-sellers.
We lack precedents for an angry bubble, so predictions are even harder than usual. But there are enough similarities with past incidents to raise serious cause for concern.
First, the little guys have had their success so far with the aid of margin accounts, and by using derivatives. We know what happens when these things are used to excess; even the Dutch tulipmania relied on margin debt and derivatives. Little guys (and everyone else) deserve safer tools with which to build wealth.
Second, “democratization of finance” isn’t new, and in itself is nothing that anyone can object to. The problem is that investment and financial planning are difficult, and require time. Regulate these things, and you no longer have true democratization. Leave people free to take chances, and you get disasters like the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000. That also followed plenty of hype about the success of the “little guy,” and the first great explosion of online discount trading succeeded in sucking an army of new retail investors into the bubble’s final climax. Unregulated “democratization” led to the little guy bearing the brunt of the losses.
“Democratizing” finance also leaves newly enfranchised financial citizens prey to spivs and frauds. I started my career covering the disastrous repercussions of one of Margaret Thatcher’s last reforms in the U.K. — giving people the right to leave their defined-benefit pensions, offered by employers, and take on defined-contribution “personal pensions.” Unscrupulous salesmen persuaded miners, firefighters and police officers to abandon copper-bottomed index-linked pensions for plans that came burdened with excessive charges. It was a repellent spectacle, and the bill for compensation was in the billions.
These points doubtless make me appear to be a complacent shill for the financial industry, talking down to the rubes. For the record, I’m still angry about the way workers were ripped off in Britain more than three decades ago, and about the way the little guy ended up bearing the brunt for the financial implosions of 2000 and 2008. But it looks horribly to me as though the same thing is going to happen again — and I don’t think the answer to today’s many ills is to empower poor people to bankrupt themselves with margin accounts and derivatives.
Anger, even more than greed, has the capacity to make us throw caution to the winds. Many of us have a lot to be angry about. If this carries on, and spreads beyond targets like a video-game retailer, I don’t want to see the consequences when history’s first angry bubble bursts.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-27/gamestop-short-squeeze-is-rage-against-the-financial-machine
Anyway, I'm sure everyone's tired of hearing about Gamestop, but hopefully this is a decent departure from the memes, hype, and completely unfounded bullshit that's been surrounding that conversation so far.

Since The Weeknd is performing at the Super Bowl Halftime show, I thought it’d be nice to post a little guide to his discography for anyone interested in looking to do a deep dive into his work. I would’ve posted this the day of the event, but I assume that some people would probably like to go through it over the weekend.
This shares a direct overview of his released material, talking about his career and the background of the music, the videos, the meanings and all. I’ve written this from a pop perspective, keeping in mind that his history might be fairly new for general pop fans.
I also go into the storyline of the red suit character, if your interested in catching up on that narrative before the Halftime show (which will continue the story), I’ve listed the chronological order below followed by an explanation of that narrative.
I wanna be clear that the interpretations/theories are not conclusive. Abel rarely shares the metaphors or meanings behind his music. This is based on widely based on fan discussion/mutual interpretation. Fans can feel free to expand on anything in the comments.
It is important to know about Abel's backstory to get a certain perspective of where he’s coming from, especially when discussing the songs that deal with substance abuse. These recent articles cover his early years really well and share an up-to-date point of view of his success.
Variety 2020
Billboard 2021 - Also a good source for getting to know his team.
So, an essential TL;DR is this: Abel Tesfaye came from a broken home, he was born to Ethiopian immigrant parents who split up when Tesfaye was less than seven. He then lived with his mother and grandmother, only rarely seeing his father but having a nice impression of him. His drug addiction started as soon as he was a high schooler, he turned to shoplifting to pay for this need of various substances. Soon he dropped out of high school, leaving his home the same weekend, which would later inspire his stage name, The Weeknd. The name is reference/homage to the weekend his life changed.
Quick side note, I didn’t think this post would nearly reach the character limit. So I’ve cut out excess detail and lists of producers (with the exception of After Hours since we’re in that era).
Table of contents

XO.
House of Balloons.
Thursday.
Echoes of Silence.
Trilogy.
Kiss Land.
King of the Fall.
Beauty Behind The Madness.
Starboy.
My Dear Melancholy.
After Hours.

XO.

XO is the record label that The Weeknd and co. created in order to publish the first mixtape (House of Balloons) and the ones that would follow afterwards. XO has a lot of meanings that have to do with what went into the music and what still goes into it. XO is what the fans call themselves, popularly with the phrase XO Till We OD (shortened to XOTWOD); another way of saying “we’re ride or die for The Weeknd and his team.”
While some argue that it could mean anything since there isn’t clear meaning to it, fans continue to associate the abbreviation with ecstasy (X) and oxycontin (O). That definition stems from XOTWOD, fans assume it’s true because of the team’s history of drug usage. While others take it as it’s classical definition “hugs and kisses” because of the consistent lyrical nature of The Weeknd’s songs.
Overtime the definition of XO is simply known as: the fans, the crew, and the label. The Weeknd is more than just one person, he comes with XO. For the sake of clarity in this writeup, I’m going to refer to his crew as XO and the fans as “the fans.”
XO still serves as a record label, the current roster is The Weeknd, Belly, Nav, and Black Atlass. It remains The Weeknd’s record label and was his first label before becoming a subsidiary of Republic Records.
Throughout his career, The Weeknd has worked with Illangelo, a Canadian producer who’s work the fans adore. Carlo “Illangelo” Montagnese was one of main the producers on The Weeknd’s Trilogy, he’s credited on each track. The fan base claims his work to be some of the most notable artistry in The Weeknd’s discography. Their work together continued with Beauty Behind The Madness, Illangelo worked on seven tracks for that album. He then returned for After Hours working on another seven tracks.
DaHeala, another Canadian producer, is another significant factor in The Weeknd’s music. Jason “DaHeala” Quenneville worked as lead producer on Kiss Land. He returned to work on six tracks for The Weeknd’s Beauty Behind The Madness, including the hit Earned It. DaHeala returned as a writer for six of the songs on Starboy. Then DaHeala worked on nine After Hours tracks, and worked as the only producewriter alongside The Weeknd for bonus tracks Missed You and Final Lullaby.

House of Balloons.

Didn't wanna make this NSFW, so here's the super clean edited cover

This is a happy house. We’re happy here. (House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls)

One of the most iconic title tracks of all time. House of Balloons is about a lifestyle of drugs, sex, and partying; all in effort to drown out self-doubt. It comes from a place of wanting to make it big while doing what you can to survive, all while pretending everything’s alright. The mixtape describes various sorts of women, how they’ve had impacted the life of someone who’s already down on his luck.
Fans often refer to House of Balloons as The Weeknd’s best work. The mixtape was the first introduction the world got of XO, and it was one hell of a way to make an impression. It’s personal for the fans and Abel because it’s the only piece of work known to be based on his life. At the end of the day he’s a songwriter, with many of his albums he creates scenarios and world that he likes to explore through the music. But House of Balloons is known to be based entirely on his life. It remains The Weeknd’s most critically acclaimed work.
House of Balloons was crafted through the influences of Hip-Hip/Indie-Rock with the main focus on R&B. Through the genius of Ilangelo, the record was—and is—mesmerizing capturing the essence of a lifestyle that The Weeknd described as “anti-everything.”
House of Balloons assisted The Weeknd in gaining the attention of Republic Records, which would then host The Weeknd’s own label XO. Though hesitant at first, XO decided to partner with Republic after the co-founding brothers Monte and Avery Lipman kept coming back to Toronto solely for The Weeknd.
House of Balloons received three videos, The Knowing, Wicked Games and Twenty Eight. The Knowing was the very first video The Weeknd made, so of course it’d be something other-worldly; it essentially reflects the song itself but in a sci-fi setting. Twenty Eight represents Abel’s life after fame but also his remorse of letting captivating women into his life.
Fun fact— House of Balloons is an actual place in Toronto, it was where him and his crew lived after he dropped out of high school. They’d host parties, call girls, do drugs, and to make it less depressing they’d fill it with balloons.

Thursday.

Valerie on the cover

Welcome to the other side. (Life of the Party)

Thursday consists of the same themes as HoB; sex and drugs. But there’s a twist, he’s in a semi-relationship with this girl Valerie. She’s the only one on his mind, even though they meet only one day of the week, any guesses on what day that could be? Through The Weeknd’s phenomenal voice and the insane production, we’re also presented with this story of a toxic relationship where Valerie used to have the upper hand but she no longer does when she falls for The Weeknd.
While Thursday isn’t entirely about the relationship of The Weeknd and Valerie, it consists of reflections to Abel’s life after the release of House of Balloons. The song Rolling Stone notably has a double meaning, in which Abel asks his fans if they’ll stick with him when he gets mainstream appeal and decides to change his sound.
The track Valerie wasn’t on the original release of Thursday, it added when Trilogy was released. Ending the mixtape with Heaven or Las Vegas meant that The Weeknd’s actions with and without Valerie were a result of his fatherless childhood, making him push anyone away. That meaning behind Thursday doesn’t change when Valerie is added to the track list, it just means that both want the toxic relationship back.
The Zone (feat. Drake) was the first feature The Weeknd had on any of his work, the video for it was released in November of 2012. Rolling Stone had also received a video in October of 2012. Both were directed by The Weeknd and reflect the two different aspects of Thursday. The Zone has Valerie living it up in the House of Balloons. And Rolling Stone has The Weeknd doing a photoshoot for Trilogy, reflective of the song itself.
Fun Fact— the female voice heard in Lonely Star is The Weeknd’s, he pitched his voice to make it sound like a woman’s.

Echoes of Silence.

Diana on the cover

Laisse tomber les filles. Un jour c'est toi qu'on laissera. [Leave the girls alone. One day it’ll be you they will leave.] (Montreal)

Out of a dark introductory into the early life of The Weeknd, Echoes of Silence is the darkest work of his Trilogy. Let’s be honest the story here isn’t entirely ethical at times but makes for one hell of a mixtape.
Similar to Thursday, Echoes of Silence follows a storyline. After accumulating success, The Weeknd gains the attention of various women. There was this one woman (D.D.) who he liked but she initially rejected him (Montreal). The woman came back to him for his fame status and evidently fell in love with him (Outside), but now that he’s got the upper hand he treats him like a groupie (XO/The Host) and lets... bad things happen to her; she’s gotta pass a test before she can get with him. This test is either drugs or his crew (Initiation). He ultimately tells this woman that he’s not exactly longterm-relationship material, perhaps because her love is temporary (Same Old Song), because he’s Next. With the end of Echoes of Silence (originally ending on the title track) the listener is left to wonder why The Weeknd left her if he’d simply want her to stay.
As a side note— Initiation should not be condoned. It remains true that The Weeknd is a songwriter and the progression of time has changed perspectives. But a song that makes such suggestions as Initiation should not be ethically/morally claimed or celebrated.
The mixtape follows The Weeknd’s lifestyle after he’s gained all this success, he’s still the same person but now he’s gotten everything he wanted. Some tracks such as The Fall continue to emphasize his journey into stardom and his acceptance of fame being temporary. With the added Till Dawn (Here Comes The Sun), The Weeknd acknowledges the changes in his life, realizing that the old lifestyle is no longer there for him or his past lovers.
Echoes of Silence is known as an underrated gem of The Weeknd’s discography, it’s well received by fans and critically acclaimed but often brushed under the rug in discussion of his work. A lot of fans and casual listeners play the mixtapes through Trilogy rather than their respective albums. This often leads to people not playing EoS either at all or only the first few tracks, this is predominantly due to the nature of the compilation being nearly three hours long.
Fun fact— D.D. is a cover of Michael Jackson’s iconic Dirty Diana. Fans have named the woman in Echoes of Silence Diana because of this track. Various theories argue that the mixtape itself is based on the Dirty Diana itself with exaggerations of the truth, or whether or not it’s a story The Weeknd crafted based on the song.

Trilogy.

Rolling Stone video doubled as a shoot

You don’t know what’s in store. (High For This.)

Trilogy is a compilation of The Weeknd’s mixtapes, House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence. These three mixtapes were released 3-4 months apart from one another for free digital download in 2011, they gained quite a lot of attention from various industry executives.
Prior to the release of Trilogy, The Weeknd featured on Drake’s Take Care with Crew Love. The song was Abel’s first exposure to a Rap crowd/Rap fans, more people began listening to his music after the release of Take Care. The Weeknd then featured on Wiz Khalifa’s Remember You, which served as the second single off Wiz Khalifa’s O.N.I.F.C. Following those two releases, The Weeknd released Wicked Games as the first single off Trilogy.
Trilogy was formed after The Weeknd came under Republic Records’ management. The compilation album reached a debut/peak position of 4 on the Billboard 200 while reaching number one on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. It’s a well received album with the highlight said to be House of Balloons, which arguably went on to influence various sorts of R&B music of the 2010s.
Videos for Trilogy

Kiss Land.

Iconic

I went from starin' at the same four walls for 21 years. To seein' the whole world in just 12 months. (Kiss Land)

Kiss Land is based on The Weeknd’s tour life. Visiting unfamiliar places gave Abel horror movie vibes. A guy who used to own the city (Toronto) he lived in is now a small fish in the ocean of the entire world. The Weeknd’s first studio album was a great introduction into the sound he would soon get well acquainted with.
While continuing the R&B sound with the essence of Dark Wave, the album explores emptiness and regret throughout the lyrics—or what pop fans could categorize as dark pop—. The Japanese aesthetic used for various videos and the single covers/booklet reflects the themes of feeling overwhelmed by such a loud world that there’s no point in being if you don’t belong.
The album explores the real-world and the women in it as well as regrets regarding past actions, namely letting go of women who could’ve been the one in Adaptation. The Weeknd attempts to find that satisfaction in other women and past lovers, but accidentally falls for a sex worker in Belong To The World. With Wanderlust he accepts and expresses that love in the modern world isn’t entirely possible. While continuing to tour the world he enjoys these new experiences with XO (Live For feat. Drake), as well as the new women in his life (Kiss Land). And when he’s back home, he accepts the loss of the relationship he cherished.
Kiss Land debuted and peaked at number two on the Billboard 200. It was fairly acclaimed but gained a massive cult following. There were four videos for made for the album, the title track, Belong To the World, Live For (feat. Drake), and Pretty. Those four songs received interesting visuals that kept up with their respective themes while Belong To the World/Kiss Land got visuals that matched the aesthetic of the album. To this day fans ask Abel for a part two to the horror-movie-inspired album after he said it’s the only album he would have a sequel for.
Videos for Kiss Land
Fun Fact— The video for Kiss Land on YouTube is an extremely edited version of the actual video shot for the song. The directors cut further explores the erotic-horror themes if the album.

King of the Fall.

King of the Fall 2020 cover (even though I talk about three other songs here)

Driving by the streets we used to walk through like a triumph. (King of the Fall)

These next few song were released between the Kiss Land and Beauty Behind the Madness era. Some fans would classify them as part of the Beauty Behind the Madness era—I’d say the same tbh—but they stand apart on the basis of success and acclaim. It’s a transition between The Weeknd being an underrated R&B musician to being a mainstream artist with massive recognition and appreciation.
The first of these four songs is King of the Fall. A fan favourite and a standout in The Weeknd’s discography. This is one of The Weeknd’s few Rap tracks, it gained a lot of attention within the Rap sphere. It was the way in which XO would announce that they’ve made it, little did they know that this was just the start.
Prior to the release of Beauty Behind the Madness (BBTM), The Weeknd gained mainstream attention. The Weeknd’s exposure to mainstream music was uphill, it wasn’t overnight. The first taste of BBTM came from Often, a song that reflected the themes of sex that Abel was known for. The track was released more than a year before BBTM’s release and had made it onto the trackless unlike King of the Fall. Slowly but surely The Weeknd gained exposure, his main sources of exposure were through a collaboration and a soundtrack.
Most pop fans heard about The Weeknd through his hit collaboration with Ariana Grande, Love Me Harder. The collab was made through Republic when The Weeknd said he wanted more than what he had gotten through Kiss Land. Ariana and Abel had formed a real bond cough The Hills cough, their bond assisted the song in becoming a memorable hit for both artists. Love Me Harder was a top ten hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
Later that year, The Weeknd was featured on the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack with Earned It, as well as Where You Belong. Earned It became a massive hit peaking at 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and receiving an Oscar nomination for The Weeknd; a massive milestone for XO. Earned It kept up with Abel’s signature lyrics but the production differed heavily from the sort of R&B he was known for.
Videos from that era

Beauty Behind the Madness.

I can hear this image

I'm that ***** with the hair singin' 'bout poppin' pills, fuckin' bitches, livin' life so trill. (Tell Your Friends)

Following the success of Love Me Harder and Earned It, the Beauty Behind the Madness era began with The Hills. This was The Weeknd’s first number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Along with the video, The Hills became an addictive classic. The production and lyrics mirror a mature version of the sound that was originally found on Trilogy. It was truly in keeping with The Weeknd’s character, the only difference was his haircut.
Next came Can’t Feel My Face, a Max Martin production that differed greatly from anything The Weeknd put out in the past. In past songs, Abel had expressed his fear of losing his following if he went mainstream simultaneously asking his fans if they’d stay. He repeats that sentiment in the Can’t Feel My Face video. The sound has changed, the lyrics stay the same but now he’s a pop-star. The song became a hit as it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. With this massive bop previous fans still stayed, The Weeknd becoming a pop singer didn’t at all alter his image or sound; he mastered it.
In The Night and Acquainted were released as singles on the same day, the were the only singles to come after the release of Beauty Behind The Madness. The former received a music video treatment that followed the theme of the song itself while also starring Abel’s girlfriend at the time, Bella Hadid. Acquainted was robbed of a video even though Abel had shown off the fact that a video was in development; the song kept in the tone of The Weeknd’s work prior to BBTM.
Beauty Behind the Madness captures a Hollywood-based reality that The Weeknd came to understand: the dark aspects of your life will continue to follow you wherever you are. Real Life, Losers (feat. Labrinth), Tell Your Friends, Dark Times (feat. Ed Sheeran), and Prisoner (feat. Lana Del Rey) all capture a nihilistic view of a dream achieved.
Most of the videos of Beauty Behind The Madness have a mysterious white man. He’s featured in The Hills, Can’t Feel My Face, and Tell Your Friends. That man represents the devil. Throughout his journey in those videos, (The Hills) Abel runs into the devil after his car crash, (Can’t Feel My Face) he’s at the club then lights him on fire. The significance behind the fire could be selling his soul to the devil, BBTM is about Hollywood and a popular Hollywood myth is that celebrities sell their souls to the devil in exchange for fame. So in the Can’t Feel My Face video, Abel changes his sound to Pop (from R&B) thus leaving his signature sound in order to become famous, everyone starts enjoying his music once he’s sold his soul.
Then we see The Weeknd burying himself in Tell Your Friends, perhaps leaving the old Abel behind after the deal with the devil. However, instead of thanking the devil, Abel takes his revenge and shoots him. But wait, there’s more! The album trailer for BBTM features the devil burning a billboard with The Weeknd’s face on it, revealing Beauty Behind The Madness. HOWEVER, the final cut for the video features the devil being arrested while The Weeknd watches. This is a more realistic form of karma that the devil gets.
Videos for BBTM

Starboy.

Filled with bops

If I could, I'd trade it all, trade it for a halo. And she said that she'll pray for me, I said, "It's too late for me.” (Ordinary Life)

After the massive success of Beauty Behind the Madness, there was a lot of hype around what The Weeknd would do next; evidently he decided to explore Pop. The fandom he had gained wasn’t entirely based in the Pop sphere, his fans consisted of general Rap fans, but Starboy attracted the Pop audience.
Initially, most of his older fans couldn’t get behind Starboy, it differed greatly from the previous sound. It was crazy to think that the guy who made Trilogy managed to make such a Pop-centric album. But this was Abel expressing his versatility.
Since this is where most pop fans found out about Abel’s work and became fans I won’t talk too much about the singles, rather more about the album itself. His work with Daft Punk cemented this album in an efficient mix between Pop and R&B, where Beauty Behind the Madness was more R&B with Pop, Starboy was considered Pop with R&B.
Beyond the genres, Starboy explores two evident themes. One being his life with fame and recognition. The next being his love life in Hollywood, this aspect of the album came from his relationship with Bella Hadid which ended after the release of the album.
The cross became the symbol for that era and appeared in the album’s photoshoot as well as the videos. There was never any conclusive word on the use of the cross but there are various theories about it, something to note is that Abel was raised Christian, it could perhaps be a reflection of his past.
The cross he uses to destroy his accolades (Starboy video) is assisting him rather than something that’s holding him back. Abel’s upbringing was rough but now he’s celebrating it rather than feeling bad for himself. The cross continues to come up in the Party Monster video, this time it’s in the party house he’s making his way through. Then it shows up in the video for Reminder, this time in the form of his merch, the people wearing it are perhaps representative of his fans. Then we see it in the False Alarm video, both Abel and the girl are wearing it; the notable thing being that Abel holds his cross up before dying. Then in the brilliant video for Secrets, after giving up on the girl he’s with he leaves the building to find a giant cross. And finally in the I Feel It Coming video, The Weeknd sports a shiny cross necklace, and Daft Punk find it years and years after Abel froze.
The videos tell us that the cross is an evident piece of his story. This could mean that his past will always be with him, no matter what sort of fame he’s experiencing he’ll always be who he once was.
Also, I’m gonna take this moment to once again the genius that is the Secrets (both the song and the video). Yes it’s my favourite song/video off of Starboy but it’s so underrated.
Videos for Starboy, Secrets video bottom right
Fun Fact— Most demos of the tracks on Starboy weren’t as pop as they became, they started off R&B but became pop after production.

My Dear Melancholy.

Note the comma

They said our love is just a game, I don't care what they say. But I'ma drink the pain away, I'll be back to my old ways. (Privilege)

Oof (but in a good way, this whole thing is a bop). For this one I’m gonna talk extensively about The Weeknd’s relationships, which personally feels really invasive but it’s but it’s essential when talking about these sad boy anthems. Beyond that I’d just like to state that though they are part of the narrative both Bella Hadid and Selena Gomez deserve respect/privacy.
So when it comes to Pop music fans I think it’s safe to say that we all know a lot about this one. My Dear Melancholy (MDM) came after the very public relationship of The Weeknd and Selena Gomez. However it’s not just about Selena, some songs reflect his relationship with Bella Hadid (whom he got back with a month after MDM’s release).
My Dear Melancholy consists with The Weeknd’s exploration/mastery of merging Pop and R&B together. The EP was praised by fans for its lyrics and production, many went on to theorize that it was his most personal project since House of Balloons. The EP was the shortest album to reach number one on the Billboard 200.
My Dear Melancholy and fan conspiracies; name a better duo. The first theory being that the EP is entirely about Selena Gomez which wasn’t too much of a mystery since the lyric “I almost cut a piece of myself for your life” exists. Not only did MDM come after Abel’s relationship with Selena Gomez but also after his relationship with Bella Hadid. As far as fans were aware those two relationships were the most important relationships Abel had ever been in.
In theory, the songs about Bella and Selena can be categorized. Call Out My Name, Try Me, and Privilege are likely about Selena. Wasted Times, and Hurt You are likely about Bella. Leaving I Was Never There to act as an introspective look into The Weeknd’s life, basically making him hop back on his vices for comfort.
Another popular theory was that My Dear Melancholy was the first of another trilogy. This rumour was widely believed due to the comma at the end of the title on the album cover. But the fans soon gained a real reason to believe this theory, since the CEO of XO (the record label), Sal had liked an Instagram post that featured the cover and alleged date. Since Trilogy is a fan favourite this conspiracy spread like wild fire, so much so that fake titles and covers were made. The name of this trilogy would be: (1)My Dear Melancholy, (2)We’re Alone Together, (3)Abel.
Only one song served as a single for the EP. Call Out My Name was released nearly two months prior to the actual release of the album, it debuted/peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100. The mysterious video captures The Weeknd in various atmospheric places that reflect the tone of the EP, a haunting yet unexplained reality that the listener is to reflect on.
From the cover, to the music, to the video, to lyrics, My Dear Melancholy is an introspective reflection of heartbreak.
Call out my name video

After Hours.

Talented, Brilliant, Incredible, etc.

My darkest hours. (After Hours)

After Hours comes after success but references two lows in The Weeknd’s life. The album welcomes darkness and leads the listener towards a dead-end. The Weeknd’s past two albums (Beauty Behind The Madness and Starboy) ended on hopeful notes, they left the listener with a sense of hope but all hope his lost with After Hours.
Fans compare After Hours to House of Balloons—a rare occurrence considering House of Balloons’ acclaim—arguing that both albums are on the same level. Debate continues on whether or not both albums are on the same caliber. The belief that After Hours stems from reality does a lot to help its side of the argument.
The era began with Mercedes-Benz commercial that featured Blinding Lights, that was our first taste of the everlasting bop. Heartless was premiered on an episode of Memento Mori hours before its release on the 27 of November (2019), Blinding Lights was released two days later. Both videos were as brain melting as promised and the served as the tip of the iceberg.
After Hours was released nine days after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, there was a massive risk in releasing an album that would not have a lot of promotion after it’s release (other than magazine coverage). There was no telling whether or not people would pay attention to the album during the height of the fear surrounding the pandemic, but it was a massive success. After Hours debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, with singles Heartless and Blinding Lights topping the Billboard Hot 100.
The album is layered with haunting productions that remains predominantly R&B but dives deep into Pop with some of the tracks. Max Martin produced the massive hit Blinding Lights as well as In Your Eyes, Save Your Tears, Hardest to Love, and Scared to Live which samples Elton John’s Your Song. Other notable producers include Metro Boomin who worked on the hit Heartless as well as Escape from LA, Faith, and Until I Bleed Out. With Kevin Parker on the interlude Repeat After Me.
Beyond the production are the narrative driven lyrics. In theory the album references two significant events in Abel’s life, his second breakup with Bella Hadid and his arrest in Las Vegas. The latter was due to his misbehaviour; in January 2015 he punched a cop in Vegas, lmao. Which means that After Hours is a recollection of The Weeknd’s first few years in LA. He merges the concept of his breakup with the idea of being an upcoming star, feeling free in the city of lights all while diving deep into the meaninglessness of those lights.
While After Hours starts with loneliness and a second chance it leads up to Abel returning to his vices of lust. In Alone Again his loneliness caught up to him and he’s asking for a second chance. He acknowledges his mistakes and situation in Too Late/Hardest to Love, in Scared to Live his ex then returns to him for a second time. He remembers his past ways in Snowchild and the way in which it lead to better days, but where do you go after such highs? In Escape From LA he faces the superficial reality of Hollywood, glad that he got that he got back with his ex, while continuing to question if it’s worth it. But he fucks up the second chance when she pulls up to the studio.
Who is she? Much like the other mysteries surrounding The Weeknd’s music, we may never know. Is it all more of The Weeknd’s songwriting ability or is it driven by reality? Fans found a merge between the two to be more accurate, After Hours is about heartbreak and a return to the vices that held The Weeknd back.
Heartless is when The Weeknd is once again back to his ways, he may have been in a serious relationship but after throwing that away he spirals back to the way he once was. It’s sad but it’s one hell of a song. Speaking of brilliant songs, Faith is when Abel admits that he’s back on his vices, he states that he needs his ex back with him till the end; he’s back to self-loathing.
So when he says he’s blinded by the lights, there’s two meanings to it. The Faith outro tells us that he’s in a car with flashing lights, a cop car (as confirmed by Abel) to be exact. Then Blinding Lights tells us that while he’s watching the bright lights of Vegas pass him by he calls out for the girl that he regrets losing. That is the peak of the After Hours narrative. He’s behaving badly over the loss of the girl he loved and is now at the worst position trying to find her and gain her trust for a third time.
Following Blinding Lights is In Your Eyes, this is where The Weeknd vows not to judge her; he can see right through her but will never do anything to make her upset. Does this mean their back together? Not exactly. Save Your Tears details a sort of moving-on that The Weeknd isn’t ready for but tries to help her move on, blind to his own inability to move on. Does it work? Not really. Repeat After Me (Interlude) shows that he’s still trying to convince himself that he’s unfazed by the loss of a meaningful relationship.
Then you hear a true masterpiece. The title track is a spiral into true regret and an apology for his actions, he admits that his ex girlfriend is the only reason he lives. In a dark lonely city she’s the only one keeping him sane. But his pleas fail, Until I Bleed Out is when The Weeknd no longer wants her in his life so much so that he wants to erase his memory of anything related to her. The bonus tracks then echo the final sentiment.
It’s one sad ass album, ain’t it. But here’s where the Red Suit Character comes in.
Shoutout to the makeup department
The album isn’t the only narrative to follow with After Hours. The videos for the album follow their own sort of narrative. The story follows an unnamed guy that goes by “red suit character” according to The Weeknd.
There’s a lot of confusion and endless theories surrounding this character’s story, after The Weeknd confirmed that it’s about a decent into Hollywood culture it makes more sense… kind of. I’m gonna discuss the storyline without talking about the movies that have influenced it, this way the focus remains on the character.
The order of these videos is Heartless / Blinding Lights / Blinding Lights (Live on Kimmel)* / After Hours short film / In Your Eyes / Until I Bleed Out / Snowchild / Too Late / Live at AMAs* / Save Your Tears
*Though all live performances could count as part of the narrative, these one relate directly with the videos that follow.
He’s is first seen in Vegas with Metro Boomin (Heartless), intoxicated on various substances. He dives deeper into his high until he licks a frog, after that he faces the true effects of this high. He’s frightened by the result and runs far away from Vegas. (Blinding Lights) He’s then found in LA, where he’s dancing in the street, hypnotized by the singer, beat up by guards, and races past all those bright lights in his Benz. Ultimately realizing the shallowness of the Los Angeles fantasy.
(Blinding Lights Live on Kimmel) We then find him performing Blinding Lights live, while he attempts to find more reason in within the madness city; he couldn’t find it on the streets so he goes to the stage. (After Hours short film) Even then there’s no meaning to anything in the city, he mindlessly wanders into the depth of the subway where he’s dragged by the reality of it all and ends up possessed. (In Your Eyes) After being possessed he chases the woman whose boyfriend he just murdered, she runs into a club falls deeper into the After Hours fantasy, in a successful attempt to defend herself she beheads the red suit character and dances all over LA with his head, iconic behaviour.
(Until I Bleed Out) Then in an ethereal dreamscape, red suit character finds himself in a House of Balloons. He’s trying to escape, but the people there keep pulling him in; he’s getting higher while observing Glass Table Girls. He spirals into the antarctic, the other side of the world. From Heatless to this point in his story, his vices lead him back to the lowest point in Abel’s life. Is it Hell, Heaven or Las Vegas? (Snowchild) He relives his career up until the point where his story began. Considering he’s dead, his life basically flashed before his eyes.
(Too Late) LA girls find the red suit character’s head and live their best life. They wanna have sex with him so they find the best boy parts by calling up a stripper who could be the body. The stitch the head up with the body and do what they want. But now he’s brought back to life. (Live at AMAs) He’s had work done… He went in to get his nose fixed and the doctor said “you sure that’s all you want?” The red suit character’s face is healing while he tries to celebrate his life on top of a bridge.
(Save Your Tears) Surrounded by a masked cult he debut’s his new face. Do they like it? Are they impressed? Not instantly, their masks translate no expression so how’s he to know? Is any of this worth it? Nope red suit character continues to die inside. He finds a maskless girl in the crowd, she’s lively unlike the rest; but even then, nothing on the inside nothing on the outside. He wants death again, somehow a second chance with this city is still pointless. He tries to kill himself via the girl and himself but it’s all a facade; theatrics.
His story continues but that’s all we know so far.
The videos make a lot of film references. This post by explain these references very well, as well as past album references here (part one) and here (part two).
After Hours is inspired by a lot of movies, since Abel is in fact a cinephile. The main movies that inspired the aesthetic and storytelling are believed to be Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Casino (1995), Joker (2019), Uncut Gems (2020), and After Hours (1985). The album tells two sad narratives but remains one of The Weeknd’s best works yet. He’s expanded his videography and enhanced the interest of people who casually enjoy his music and of course his fans.
But the era isn’t over, by the time this is posted his Super Bowl Halftime show is yet to happen. And it’ll continue the red suit character’s story.
Videos for After Hours (so far)
Fun Fact—The Heartless video features a reference to Thursday. When he’s trying to run from Vegas, a sign behind him flashes “Heartless / Heaven or Las Vegas.” This could be a reference to Abel running from his past, after all Heartless is about him returning to his vices.

END.

Thank you for reading this, again, I didn’t realize it would end up being this long. But I hope this this served as a nice refresher for any fans who wanted to revisit Abel’s work before the Super Bowl.
And I really hope that anyone interested in getting into his music finds this helpful. Once again, the theories/interpretations mentioned aren’t conclusive, they’re widely based on fan discussion/mutual interpretation.
Due to the character limit I couldn’t add too links to the albums, so here are some artist links.
Apple Music | Spotify | YouTube | The Weeknd’s Shop | Tidal | Genius

TLDR: GameStop’s Congress hearing is on Feb 18th, they need to investigate the Prime Brokers and DTCC for their complicity in enabling naked shorting within GME and by extension, potential collusion to shut down trading on Jan 28th, the day the short squeeze was going to kick off. (stick to the end for an analysis of some illegal tactics short side hedge funds have been using)
Thesis: On the day the retail market for GME shut down on 1/28 (the day the short squeeze would’ve happened had there been no market intervention), DTCC (clearing house monopoly) shut down retail buying in order to protect itself and Prime Brokers (which privately own the DTCC) from being exposed to the consequences of being party to illegal activity. I believe Prime Brokers and DTCC need to be called to the GameStop hearing on February 18th to be questioned for their complicity in enabling illegal naked shorting of the GME stock, as well as potential collusion to shut out retail buyers on 1/28.
In my previous post (which I recommend reading for some context) I explored the subject of rampant illegal naked shorting in GME, and how Prime Brokers (consisting of banks like Goldman, Morgan, etc) and DTCC would be complicit in the naked shorting. This in turn raises the thought experiment that they would be incentivized to do anything possible to prevent the short squeeze from happening on 1/28 because had the short squeeze happened, the shorts would go bankrupt and their Prime Brokers who lent them their naked shorted shares would need to cover the shares. This would not only represent a humongous capital expense for Prime Brokers, the culpability of Prime Brokers (and that of the DTCC) in this situation would also have likely been exposed as well.
A quick primer on what a Prime Broker is: Prime Brokers are essentially the service side of the short- selling business. They lend out securities and cash, you can think of them as the “house” in a casino: They provide a gambler with markers to play and to manage his winnings. According to Matt Taibi, “Under the original concept, if a hedge fund that wanted to short a stock they would first need to “locate” the stock with his Prime Broker but as time passed, Prime Brokers increasingly allowed their hedge-fund customers to use automated systems and “locate” the stock themselves, and what this does is enable short-sellers to sell stock without delivering and thereby perform naked shorts with counterfeit shares. (source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210213125246/https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/wall-streets-naked-swindle-194908/). (I highly recommend you read Matt Taibi’s article on naked shorting and how it was used to take down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. There are so many parallels with GME it’s hard to miss. It’s amazing to consider that 12 years after this article was published and brought to public awareness, the problem of naked shorting still exists as a systemic issue.)
Prime Brokers have a long history of being associated with naked shorting. To highlight a few examples, Prime Brokers like Merill Lynch and Goldman have long been implicated for naked shorting Overstock.com (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/accidentally-released-and-incredibly-embarrassing-documents-show-how-goldman-et-al-engaged-in-naked-short-selling-244035/, https://www.forbes.com/2007/02/02/naked-short-suit-overstock-biz-cx_lm_0202naked.html?sh=271400d1763f). Another example is when Goldman’s Prime Brokerage was implicated by the SEC in 2016 and got away with a small fine of 16 million (Source: https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2016-9.html). An example that very recently came in the news is a story where CIBC, BOA, UBS and TD Bank Prime Brokerages are accused of facilitating naked short selling and using counterfeit stock to attack and bring the stock price of a company from $34.77 to $1.83 (Source: https://www.securitiesfinancetimes.com/securitieslendingnews/industryarticle.php?article_id=224548).
The DTCC also has a very long history of being associated with naked shorting. The Wall Street Journal noted that 1% of the DTCC’s volume end in failure to deliver which “have put DTCC in the middle of a long-running fight over whether unscrupulous investors are driving down hundreds of small companies' share prices… DTCC has turned a blind eye to the naked-shorting problem. ” (Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720). The DTCC has also had numerous complaints submitted to the SEC for enabling naked shorting (source: https://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/s72303/decosta122203.htm) and have been sued tens or hundreds of times for assisting naked shorts (source: https://smithonstocks.com/part-3-in-series-on-illegal-naked-shortings-role-in-stock-manipulation-prime-brokers-and-the-dtcc-have-a-troubling-monopoly-on-clearing-and-settling-stock-trades/ and http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html and https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720)
On 1/28 Robinhood received a letter from the DTCC at 4 am requiring them to halt trading or come up with 3 billion dollars, which Robinhood did not have, and therefore with one swoop of the pen the DTCC shut down buy side momentum but strangely allowed selling. Retail investors were shut out of the market and as any student of microeconomics would know, by shutting buy but only allowing sell, the price is bound to fall. Meanwhile while hedge funds were able to keep trading not only in the market but also crosstrade in the dark pools (“private” stock markets that retail is shut out of, more on this later), and use this crucial lifeline given to them by the DTCC to prevent the squeeze from happening that day.
With retail abruptly being shut out from buy (even cash accounts were shut out, which didn’t make sense) and only allowed to sell, almost everyone could smell manipulation was afoot (which triggered the Congress hearing) and the most of the blame was pointed at Robinhood. Personally and in hindsight, I believe Robinhood was just a willing scapegoat. When we think about who had the most to lose if a short squeeze occurred, I’ll narrow it down to three entities, Shorts and their stakeholders (ie Citadel), Prime Brokers and the DTCC.
It’s important to remember that the actual impetus that triggered the shutdown of the market for retail investors came from the DTCC. Working backwards, if you consider that GME was rampantly naked shorted and DTCC and Prime Brokers would have to be complicit in it, I believe the DTCC, Primer Brokers and possibly Citadel (who provides 40% of Robinhood’s revenue) brazenly manipulated the market on 1/28 by shutting down purchasing for retail buyers to prevent the squeeze from being squoze on that day as doing so would be catastrophic for all aforementioned parties involved. I believe that on the upcoming Gamestop Congress hearings the Financial Services Committee needs to call on decision makers of DTCC and Prime Brokers explore their role and complicity in the shut out of retail buyers that day as well as being enablers of naked shorting in GME.
An interesting thought experiment: On 1/28 when the price was 450+ and shorts were likely under 100, if we assume prime brokers allowed naked shorting in GME, then when the squeeze was about to happen (or happening), if Prime Brokers had margin had called the shorts, they would presumably also also gone down because shorts would not be able to pay in that event and the brokers would be holding the bag. By that logic, they have every incentive in this case to NOT to margin call and instead the most logical option would probably would have been to make a backroom deal, which is what I personally think most likely happened.
If you’ve read up to this point, you might be thinking what can I do about this? I am aware that there a lot of cynicism that we can’t do anything, that there will be no justice for retail investors who were harmed this situation, and that institutions and people in power will prevent anything from being done. I feel this sometimes too, but remember:
A single voice can be drowned out, but if we all speak together then we will make our voice heard. Ape Strong Together.
With the hearing coming up on February 18th, I highly recommend you email and tweet the representatives involved in the hearing, as well as your own district representatives, and urge them to read into the factors presented in this post and call the DTCC and Prime Brokers to the hearingl. They need to be questioned on why GME has so many counterfeit shares, failed to deliver, their complicity in naked shorting, and investigated for their role in the retail shut down of 1/28. Below are 4 members of congress I recommend both tweeting and emailing
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez https://twitter.com/AOC, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Al Green https://twitter.com/repalgreen, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Maxine Waters https://twitter.com/maxinewaters, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Nancy Pelosi Email: https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).
And you can find other members of Financial Services Committee here to reach out to: https://financialservices.house.gov/about/committee-membership.htm
What follows should probably be a separate post, but I will take the opportunity to summarize some of the illegal tactics that shorts have been identified to be using in their war with retail investors. Note that this may not be an exhaustive list and there may be newer tactics deployed in the future. Retail investors might not have the same tricks, resources and willingness to break the law for profit as hedgies do, but my hope and belief is that if we pool our knowledge and analysis, we will figure out their game and effectively adapt.
Feel free to forward the list below to any representatives and lawmakers if you concur that these tactics were used:
Rampant Naked Shorting - With the extremely high number of Fail to Delivers (FTID) , short interest being as high as 226% recently, and institutions alone holding a staggering 177% of the total float (likely due in large part to counterfeit shares), signs strongly point to GME being rampant with naked shorts and counterfeit shares. I believe the original goal of shorts was to drive GME to bankruptcy with these naked shorts, using the laddering of naked shorts (aka short ladder attack), executed with the help of counterfeit stock which is a classic and reliable method of driving down the stock price. I believe the GME stock has seen relentlessly aggressive short attacks, especially on the week of Monday February 1st, which drove the stock price down and triggered panic selling.
Ladder Attacks with the help of Dark Pools - Another identified method of ladder attacks was identified to come from crosstrading with darkpools (the stock market has its own private stock exchange where institutions can trade…). Essentially darkpools are private stock markets retail investors do not have access to, where short side funds can purchase securities “off market” and then sell “on-market”, with the effect of creating a lot more downward pressure on the market without the upward pressure from buying.
Illegally masking shorts with synthetic longs. Another tactic shorts are suspected of using in GME is the use of illegally using options to evade short positions in violation of Reg SHO which SEC describes in this risk alert and which I elaborate in this post. Essentially it’s the use of using options to create synthetic longs to illegally and artificially cover and prolong short positions and at same time obscuring the true short interest %. If you consider that it would be far more profitable for shorts to not cover at high prices but instead ladder attack the price and wait for retail investors to lose interest and close their shorts at as low of a price as possible, then you can see why this strategy would be very effective.
Using way out-of-money call options to obscure true short interest. You may have heard about the 43 million worth of 800 dollar calls purchased when the price was 100 and found it odd. Later it was identified as a tactic to cheaply purchase synthetic call options (since at 800 its way out of money) to obscure their short positions (with the added benefit of hedging at 800 if a squeeze does happen)
One thing I want to note, particularly to legislators at the GameStop hearing: Retail investors were not incited to pump GME. Retail investors spotted a unique Short Squeeze opportunity created by the greed of short side hedge funds, whereby GameStop was being abusively naked shorted with the goal of bringing it to bankruptcy, and hedge funds were so greedy about it that they shorted the company with a short interest of 226% of float, meaning A LOT of counterfeit shares were being used to short the company. Retail investors saw this as an opportunity to short squeeze the hedge fund shorters, which is a legal and legitimate investment strategy. The short squeeze would have happened had everyone played fair, but instead, financial institutions who were culpable to the naked shorting intervened and shut down retail buying, hurting the retail investors and successfully manipulating the market. The investment itself was in my opinion a sound decision based on the short squeeze, but in hindsight retail investors did not seriously consider the risk of the market would be blatantly and publicly manipulated and that the market would be rigged against them.
If this post was useful (and I hope it was! Gave up my Friday night to write this for you Apes), please upvote for visibility and share it far and wide. The GameStop hearings could be a first step and hope towards legislative change, and it’s extremely important that the right story is told at those hearings (and by the right story I mean the real truth of what happened.) I hope the truly culpable parties are investigated and brought to justice. Again, I know many of us feel cynical that anything meaning will be done towards finding justice against the lawbreakers in this case, but if you feel even an ounce of injustice or empathy at how retail investors were unfairly harmed in the course of investing in GME, I strongly urge you to contact a legislator associated with the GameStop hearings and bring this to their attention so they can review this case with more complete information. In addition I recommend you to contact the SEC and any journalist you know or via journalist tip lines. It’s not going to be easy but the more awareness we raise the higher the likelihood our voices will be heard and positive change will be made.
As we navigate the rocky waters ahead, I’ll gift you with a favorite quote of mine:
The only difference between a nightmare and a dream is how big your balls are.
🚀🚀🚀
Disclaimer: I am not an investment advisor, I just like the stock.
Ps. If you’ve read to the end, I’ll leave you with a few more thoughts and reminders:
- If I were to distill life into one thing, it would be to never lose hope.
- Remember that if you’ve lost money in any way shape or form, don’t be depressed, money can always be made back and the important thing is to maintain a good attitude.
- Only invest what you can afford to lose.
- Perhaps the most important factor in good investing is patience.
If you’d like to read more about counterfeiting stocks this is a good place to start http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html

TLDR: GameStop’s Congress hearing is on Feb 18th, they need to investigate the Prime Brokers and DTCC for their complicity in enabling naked shorting within GME and by extension, potential collusion to shut down trading on Jan 28th, the day the short squeeze was going to kick off. (stick to the end for an analysis of some illegal tactics short side hedge funds have been using)
Thesis: On the day the retail market for GME shut down on 1/28 (the day the short squeeze would’ve happened had there been no market intervention), DTCC (clearing house monopoly) shut down retail buying in order to protect itself and Prime Brokers (which privately own the DTCC) from being exposed to the consequences of being party to illegal activity. I believe Prime Brokers and DTCC need to be called to the GameStop hearing on February 18th to be questioned for their complicity in enabling illegal naked shorting of the GME stock, as well as potential collusion to shut out retail buyers on 1/28.
In my previous post (which I recommend reading for some context) I explored the subject of rampant illegal naked shorting in GME, and how Prime Brokers (consisting of banks like Goldman, Morgan, etc) and DTCC would be complicit in the naked shorting. This in turn raises the thought experiment that they would be incentivized to do anything possible to prevent the short squeeze from happening on 1/28 because had the short squeeze happened, the shorts would go bankrupt and their Prime Brokers who lent them their naked shorted shares would need to cover the shares. This would not only represent a humongous capital expense for Prime Brokers, the culpability of Prime Brokers (and that of the DTCC) in this situation would also have likely been exposed as well.
A quick primer on what a Prime Broker is: Prime Brokers are essentially the service side of the short- selling business. They lend out securities and cash, you can think of them as the “house” in a casino: They provide a gambler with markers to play and to manage his winnings. According to Matt Taibi, “Under the original concept, if a hedge fund that wanted to short a stock they would first need to “locate” the stock with his Prime Broker but as time passed, Prime Brokers increasingly allowed their hedge-fund customers to use automated systems and “locate” the stock themselves, and what this does is enable short-sellers to sell stock without delivering and thereby perform naked shorts with counterfeit shares. (source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210213125246/https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/wall-streets-naked-swindle-194908/). (I highly recommend you read Matt Taibi’s article on naked shorting and how it was used to take down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. There are so many parallels with GME it’s hard to miss. It’s amazing to consider that 12 years after this article was published and brought to public awareness, the problem of naked shorting still exists as a systemic issue.)
Prime Brokers have a long history of being associated with naked shorting. To highlight a few examples, Prime Brokers like Merill Lynch and Goldman have long been implicated for naked shorting Overstock.com (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/accidentally-released-and-incredibly-embarrassing-documents-show-how-goldman-et-al-engaged-in-naked-short-selling-244035/, https://www.forbes.com/2007/02/02/naked-short-suit-overstock-biz-cx_lm_0202naked.html?sh=271400d1763f). Another example is when Goldman’s Prime Brokerage was implicated by the SEC in 2016 and got away with a small fine of 16 million (Source: https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2016-9.html). An example that very recently came in the news is a story where CIBC, BOA, UBS and TD Bank Prime Brokerages are accused of facilitating naked short selling and using counterfeit stock to attack and bring the stock price of a company from $34.77 to $1.83 (Source: https://www.securitiesfinancetimes.com/securitieslendingnews/industryarticle.php?article_id=224548).
The DTCC also has a very long history of being associated with naked shorting. The Wall Street Journal noted that 1% of the DTCC’s volume end in failure to deliver which “have put DTCC in the middle of a long-running fight over whether unscrupulous investors are driving down hundreds of small companies' share prices… DTCC has turned a blind eye to the naked-shorting problem. ” (Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720). The DTCC has also had numerous complaints submitted to the SEC for enabling naked shorting (source: https://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/s72303/decosta122203.htm) and have been sued tens or hundreds of times for assisting naked shorts (source: https://smithonstocks.com/part-3-in-series-on-illegal-naked-shortings-role-in-stock-manipulation-prime-brokers-and-the-dtcc-have-a-troubling-monopoly-on-clearing-and-settling-stock-trades/ and http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html and https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720)
On 1/28 Robinhood received a letter from the DTCC at 4 am requiring them to halt trading or come up with 3 billion dollars, which Robinhood did not have, and therefore with one swoop of the pen the DTCC shut down buy side momentum but strangely allowed selling. Retail investors were shut out of the market and as any student of microeconomics would know, by shutting buy but only allowing sell, the price is bound to fall. Meanwhile while hedge funds were able to keep trading not only in the market but also crosstrade in the dark pools (“private” stock markets that retail is shut out of, more on this later), and use this crucial lifeline given to them by the DTCC to prevent the squeeze from happening that day.
With retail abruptly being shut out from buy (even cash accounts were shut out, which didn’t make sense) and only allowed to sell, almost everyone could smell manipulation was afoot (which triggered the Congress hearing) and the most of the blame was pointed at Robinhood. Personally and in hindsight, I believe Robinhood was just a willing scapegoat. When we think about who had the most to lose if a short squeeze occurred, I’ll narrow it down to three entities, Shorts and their stakeholders (ie Citadel), Prime Brokers and the DTCC.
It’s important to remember that the actual impetus that triggered the shutdown of the market for retail investors came from the DTCC. Working backwards, if you consider that GME was rampantly naked shorted and DTCC and Prime Brokers would have to be complicit in it, I believe the DTCC, Primer Brokers and possibly Citadel (who provides 40% of Robinhood’s revenue) brazenly manipulated the market on 1/28 by shutting down purchasing for retail buyers to prevent the squeeze from being squoze on that day as doing so would be catastrophic for all aforementioned parties involved. I believe that on the upcoming Gamestop Congress hearings the Financial Services Committee needs to call on decision makers of DTCC and Prime Brokers explore their role and complicity in the shut out of retail buyers that day as well as being enablers of naked shorting in GME.
An interesting thought experiment: On 1/28 when the price was 450+ and shorts were likely under 100, if we assume prime brokers allowed naked shorting in GME, then when the squeeze was about to happen (or happening), if Prime Brokers had margin had called the shorts, they would presumably also also gone down because shorts would not be able to pay in that event and the brokers would be holding the bag. By that logic, they have every incentive in this case to NOT to margin call and instead the most logical option would probably would have been to make a backroom deal, which is what I personally think most likely happened.
If you’ve read up to this point, you might be thinking what can I do about this? I am aware that there a lot of cynicism that we can’t do anything, that there will be no justice for retail investors who were harmed this situation, and that institutions and people in power will prevent anything from being done. I feel this sometimes too, but remember:
A single voice can be drowned out, but if we all speak together then we will make our voice heard. Ape Strong Together.
With the hearing coming up on February 18th, I highly recommend you email and tweet the representatives involved in the hearing, as well as your own district representatives, and urge them to read into the factors presented in this post and call the DTCC and Prime Brokers to the hearingl. They need to be questioned on why GME has so many counterfeit shares, failed to deliver, their complicity in naked shorting, and investigated for their role in the retail shut down of 1/28. Below are 4 members of congress I recommend both tweeting and emailing
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez https://twitter.com/AOC, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Al Green https://twitter.com/repalgreen, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Maxine Waters https://twitter.com/maxinewaters, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Nancy Pelosi Email: https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).
And you can find other members of Financial Services Committee here to reach out to: https://financialservices.house.gov/about/committee-membership.htm
If there's one thing I took away from this its that we can't wait for other people to do the right thing, we each need to individually step up to ensure it happens
What follows should probably be a separate post, but I will take the opportunity to summarize some of the illegal tactics that shorts have been identified to be using in their war with retail investors. Note that this may not be an exhaustive list and there may be newer tactics deployed in the future. Retail investors might not have the same tricks, resources and willingness to break the law for profit as hedgies do, but my hope and belief is that if we pool our knowledge and analysis, we will figure out their game and effectively adapt.
Feel free to forward the list below to any representatives and lawmakers if you concur that these tactics were used:
Rampant Naked Shorting - With the extremely high number of Fail to Delivers (FTID) , short interest being as high as 226% recently, and institutions alone holding a staggering 177% of the total float (likely due in large part to counterfeit shares), signs strongly point to GME being rampant with naked shorts and counterfeit shares. I believe the original goal of shorts was to drive GME to bankruptcy with these naked shorts, using the laddering of naked shorts (aka short ladder attack), executed with the help of counterfeit stock which is a classic and reliable method of driving down the stock price. I believe the GME stock has seen relentlessly aggressive short attacks, especially on the week of Monday February 1st, which drove the stock price down and triggered panic selling.
Ladder Attacks with the help of Dark Pools - Another identified method of ladder attacks was identified to come from crosstrading with darkpools (the stock market has its own private stock exchange where institutions can trade…). Essentially darkpools are private stock markets retail investors do not have access to, where short side funds can purchase securities “off market” and then sell “on-market”, with the effect of creating a lot more downward pressure on the market without the upward pressure from buying.
Illegally masking shorts with synthetic longs. Another tactic shorts are suspected of using in GME is the use of illegally using options to evade short positions in violation of Reg SHO which SEC describes in this risk alert and which I elaborate in this post. Essentially it’s the use of using options to create synthetic longs to illegally and artificially cover and prolong short positions and at same time obscuring the true short interest %. If you consider that it would be far more profitable for shorts to not cover at high prices but instead ladder attack the price and wait for retail investors to lose interest and close their shorts at as low of a price as possible, then you can see why this strategy would be very effective.
Using way out-of-money call options to obscure true short interest. You may have heard about the 43 million worth of 800 dollar calls purchased when the price was 100 and found it odd. Later it was identified as a tactic to cheaply purchase synthetic call options (since at 800 its way out of money) to obscure their short positions (with the added benefit of hedging at 800 if a squeeze does happen)
One thing I want to note, particularly to legislators at the GameStop hearing: Retail investors were not incited to pump GME. Retail investors spotted a unique Short Squeeze opportunity created by the greed of short side hedge funds, whereby GameStop was being abusively naked shorted with the goal of bringing it to bankruptcy, and hedge funds were so greedy about it that they shorted the company with a short interest of 226% of float, meaning A LOT of counterfeit shares were being used to short the company. Retail investors saw this as an opportunity to short squeeze the hedge fund shorters, which is a legal and legitimate investment strategy. The short squeeze would have happened had everyone played fair, but instead, financial institutions who were culpable to the naked shorting intervened and shut down retail buying, hurting the retail investors and successfully manipulating the market. The investment itself was in my opinion a sound decision based on the short squeeze, but in hindsight retail investors did not seriously consider the risk of the market would be blatantly and publicly manipulated and that the market would be rigged against them.
If this post was useful (and I hope it was! Gave up my Friday night to write this for you Apes), please upvote for visibility and share it far and wide. The GameStop hearings could be a first step and hope towards legislative change, and it’s extremely important that the right story is told at those hearings (and by the right story I mean the real truth of what happened.) I hope the truly culpable parties are investigated and brought to justice. Again, I know many of us feel cynical that anything meaning will be done towards finding justice against the lawbreakers in this case, but if you feel even an ounce of injustice or empathy at how retail investors were unfairly harmed in the course of investing in GME, I strongly urge you to contact a legislator associated with the GameStop hearings and bring this to their attention so they can review this case with more complete information. In addition I recommend you to contact the SEC and any journalist you know or via journalist tip lines. It’s not going to be easy but the more awareness we raise the higher the likelihood our voices will be heard and positive change will be made.
As we navigate the rocky waters ahead, I’ll gift you with a favorite quote of mine:
The only difference between a nightmare and a dream is how big your balls are.
🚀🚀🚀
Disclaimer: I am not an investment advisor, I just like the stock.
Ps. If you’ve read to the end, I’ll leave you with a few more thoughts and reminders:
- If I were to distill life into one thing, it would be to never lose hope.
- Remember that if you’ve lost money in any way shape or form, don’t be depressed, money can always be made back and the important thing is to maintain a good attitude.
- Only invest what you can afford to lose.
- Perhaps the most important factor in good investing is patience.
If you’d like to read more about counterfeiting stocks this is a good place to start http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html

I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.

Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to.
Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547
I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can.
I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts.
Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T

Intro

"The last month has convinced me, that we are going to be heading into a dark place for Counter-Strike esports in 2021."
- "I think I've seen the scene essentially kill itself."
"For the past 5 to 6 years, we've basically been in a holding pattern of people coming into our game wanting to run it, wanting to run all of the esports and wanting to profiteer and its been sort of a concerted effort to drive them off and push them away."
- "We're spread way too thin."
"If Riot don't get involved and stop the scumbags that have moved over to Valorant from getting their feet under the table, Valorant is going to have real problems."
RL thinks too much has happened all at once for us to do anything except watch it play out, like:
- Recent CSPPA strike against BLAST
- ESIC failures and them not being supported enough
- Teams cheating i.e. coaches/bugs
- Widespread match fixing
- The Pandemic
  - "People who try to hold bubble events are so incompetent and fuck up and people get the 'rona and its their fault."
  - "People who say Flashpoint is a bubble is full of shit and is a lie and people are now suffering for that lie."
    - "To save money they let people go home and break the bubble for a week."
    - "Not just Flashpoint peoples decision, they have a partner that handles the production." (hinting FACEIT)
    - "People are trapped in hotels essentially under house arrest because of COVID restrictions and has fucked peoples lives up."
"It's all too much, all of this incompetence, all of this greed, maybe we ride it out."
- RL says he has talked to the Riot devs (the ones working on Valorant) and says, "They are so cognizant of all the fuck ups and all the problems we have in Counter-Strike."
  - He continues to say that this is factored into their business plan and that we never had a competitor, but just so happens to have one coincide, when we are at our worst.

CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association

"Who does this union really fucking serve?"

RL believes that the CSPPA is a mockery.
- He points out the hypocrisy that they wouldn't strike for the pros who were kicked out of ESL Pro League, or for Jamppi or dream3r.
  - He also says ESL paid CSPPA and are racketeering and many other TOs have to pay them to get their "seal of approval"
    - He says they would strong-arm TOs saying "well if you don't give us the money, these guys are so we'll just have to commit to playing their event."
  - Also points out that they will strike against a competitor they are not in agreement with (Flashpoint)
  - RL: "It's what it says about every other time you haven't done it and it's about every time you don't do it now moving forward." "The issues they've chosen to ignore this year alone are embarrassing."
  - Then he points out that there was no strike for Valve qualifiers even if we have no major but Jamppi and dream3r can't play in them.
    - "and Valve have said 'Oh yeah we know actually their stories are accurate, Jamppi didn't cheat, now in a legally binding document. Yep dream3r did have his account hacked in a LAN café', but they still can't play. Where is the fucking solidarity? Gone. Doesn't exist. It's not important [because] it doesn't affect you." "That's what the union does right now, it looks after all the tier 1 people."
He says the CSPPA doesn't represent all players all the time and has driven a divide where you have the haves and have-nots
- "We have a tier of players that operate with impunity and do not help their tier 2 or tier 3 players out at all." "If you are not a tier 1 player you do not matter, they don't event ask your opinion."
- He tells chrisJ to admit and own the fact that the reason he didn't speak up during the ESL Pro League debacle is because it didn't affect him
- "They are looking after some players at the expense of other players. How the fuck is that a union?"
He says the BLAST situation is a reasonable dispute and supports the players but is not the right time for a strike and have not even identified the correct enemy
- He thinks players are lashing out now due to previous incidents and are upset that BLAST are working with ESIC
  - He stated that CSPPA shouldn't beefing with ESIC and they should be working in harmony
- He says what they need to do is talk with the teams/organizations that have sold that right to BLAST
  - RL: "Your employers, the people who pay you that massive exorbitant salaries, when you don't stream and you don't do interviews and you offer no value beyond your ability to click heads and you get 25k dollars a month." "Why don't you talk to them about it? Oh right. You're happy to take away BLAST's paper, but you don't want to risk your own."
- "I am seeing such unbelievable cowardice from the players here with the battles you choose."
- "Where was the strike action when in the qualifiers for the world championship, there were teams and players engaged in huge conflicts of interest?" "Where was the strike action when your image rights were taken and sold to every league you've ever been in every union type organization you've ever been associated with like, WESA, to your org every time you sign a contract, to the leagues you play in."
  - "Your image rights are essentially worthless now, there's about 10 fucking separate parties that have them, and how many of them are giving you anything for it? Not much pretty much your org by the way."
  - "That's a big issue. Your image is you, your image is your brand. What are you doing about that? Nothing."
He is also angry at SirScoots who is "popping off" at people on Twitter who all want the same thing, which is 'A unified Counter-Strike scene for everybody, that works for everybody, that has a sustained ecosystem that nourishes everybody.' "We don't have that now."
He also says their rankings are a joke
- "Just so happened, oh look TACO, that very important prominent member of the board, we pushed his team artificially up when they weren't even in the fucking top 20, not by a long shot."
He also says the ineptitude of the CSPPA cost Flashpoint a monitor sponsor
"Is it really a player association or is it like a fucking agency at this point"

ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission

"They have been put in an impossible position."

RL says that Ian Smith, the founder of ESIC and who was done work in mainstream sports, is a good and honorable man who has dedicated his life to integrity and sports. He takes on both sides, ensuring match fixers are punished, but also doing appeals and ensuring those punishments were fair.
"ESIC is a tiny organization" and are in need of money, "They didn't run a grift like the CSPPA did."
- "Saying 'you want our support and you want the players to turn up you better pay us.' They don't do that."
- "Had startup seed money from MTG and since then they've been pecking shit with the hens."
  - Ian Smith made sure that the money given by MTG (Modern Times Group, parent company of ESL, ESEA, DreamHack) was nothing more than startup money and wouldn't be in debt to them
    - Ian Smith sat down with other TO's not part of MTG and wanted to partner with them. They declined and called ESIC "ESL spies and we will never align ourselves with you"
- "They only were just able to afford, hiring a PR guy on a full time salary to deal with the press and send out those releases you've seen, this year."
  - "They have a tiny group of staff investigating these things and they have taken on the biggest problems in our scene: the cheating, the match fixing."
ESIC have had "unprecedented levels of cheating to deal with, because there's something wrong with our scene ever since we went online. There's something wrong with it, everyone's lost their fucking pride and self-respect and they got no passion for it anymore, so they think fuck it, what's in it for me?"
- He calls out coaches who are talking about players rights when they would rob and steal from them.
  - Also says more coaches being banned are coming
  - He also points out flaws in community's reaction to the punishments to coaches bans: "Half of the cunts still have jobs and some of the cunts got new jobs. We didn't even shun the cheating coaches."
ESIC have "found I think another 2 or 3 exploits like that one and they are investigating them all right now, it's going on right now."
- "I know that there are going to be more names getting banned, again."
- "So they're doing that on a skeleton crew while, investigating 3 continents worth of match fixing in MDL and semi-pro level CS." "They're doing this with half a dozen people." "They don't have any money or any help. People barely even fucking cooperate with them, they are treated like pariahs. It's ridiculous."
  - "Why are the CSPPA popping off at ESIC on my Twitter timeline, when you should be working together." "because its all about what's in it in for me." "2020, the online era of CS: 'What is in it for me?' How can I cheat, how can I get my paper, how can I bleed this scene one last time before I fuck off and play shooty shooty bang bang Riot Games babys first fps."
RL says that in the CIS region, teams have gone to tournaments and have been eliminated multiple times by the same team. We found out they were cheating and those players who lost, have been cut from their roster, careers ended because of cheaters.

Stream Sniping

"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"

RL talks about how there is no integrity from dead (the player), always denying when caught doing something
- On the topic of 'BLAST never said we couldn't stream snipe': "Lies, BLAST never said you could do that, they had to sort of retcon it." "because what happened after that they fucking started snitching and squealing"
  - "Suddenly you had like, 10 of the top 15 teams in the world, staring into the abyss of being banned for 6-12 months in line with ESIC recommendations."
    - He says that ESIC was put in a tough situation and couldn't enforce the bans because it would have resulted in killing CS. What resulted was, BLAST, ESIC, and teams came together and gave them a warning and told them, in RL's words "don't do this again or you're gonna get got."
      - He then says the top teams brushed this off and didn't give a fuck
      - The new MiBR team playing Flashpoint, that wasn't involved in the previous incidents are doing it again (stream sniping). He gave credit to Flashpoint for the quick resolution and punishment and respect for cogu's response to the situation.
      - "ESIC came out and said, once more, 'Guys, zero tolerance from now on.'" RL then got upset at community's reaction calling ESIC "pussies" for their non enforcement and said if we want competitive CS we cant ban the top 10 teams.
He points out how players have no integrity and will do anything for an edge as long as they won't get detected or banned or it's within a grey area.
"All of this shit was mad avoidable, even in the pandemic era."
- He talks about why aren't we filming them. Why aren't there representatives for leagues and tournaments making sure players aren't cheating?

Match Fixing

"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."

RL says that gambling and skins betting which existed in moderation was "accelerated and blown up by the Call of Duty greedy fucks."
- "Never forget TmarTn was on the board of EnVyUs." "His website, CSGOLotto, they had a bunch of off-the-books sponsorships." "NBK promoted them. People forget."
"Those people who had access to the skins, go to the players" "Even people like s1mple, best player in the world, even he scammed knives and skins off fucking fans."
Owners of skin casino sites would approach pros and lend them skins to use in tournaments and possibly keep them after reaching a deal
- Players would tip off inside info about matches and teams in exchange for skins. Info such as: roster changes, how they played in scrims
  - They would use this info to bet and subvert the odds on their sites. "That happened religiously, I can't even tell you how many times it happened."
    - "I had access to the biggest database of information, from an inside betting circle in NA, and it would take information and screenshots from other pro players, who were feeding them info in exchange for money or skins."
      - "Some of these players are still playing." "Incredibly, there are players still in the CSPPA today, complaining about the BLAST recordings, that were embroiled in this murky shit back then."
RL also says that there were tournaments where teams contrived with each other, who should throw, who should win.
"There's a handful of people that are trying to fucking clean it up, and you think you get something over the line and you see something like the CSPPA and it's run by corrupt fucking chuckle heads, and now you've got another corrupt body you have to fight on a fucking daily basis, it's demoralizing."
- "It's too far gone. Our entire semi-professional scene is compromised."
"It's rife guys, I'm not going to lie any more. It's not just China, it's not just Russia, it's here, it's NA, it's Europe, it's Australia, so much more than you think, so much more than we can prove."
- "I get sent chat logs all the time […] and they're morons, these players, short-sighted, amateur, morons and they're doing it on WhatsApp." People would get cut from the bets because they want to make more money, then they leak the logs. He says, from the chat logs, they spread "little" bets across every site they can (400 to 1k dollars) to prevent shifting odds
He says the scumbags who've fucked off to Valorant will do the same there if Riot doesn't do something and says Valorant "is an esports scene heading for a very early fall based on the sheer volume of scumbags that are already there."
"That's tier 2 CS in a nutshell these days. They know they're never going to play in a major, so what's the punishment?"
- "All of these tier 2 fucks that are fixing games now they are like the fucking mafia compared to iBuyPower" "These guys are working with organized criminals to fix entire seasons worth of games. That's what's going on in your tier 2 CS."
"I'm literally being told that there are players fixing games at all levels of Chinese esports and motherfuckers with guns are turning up to team houses and stuff."

North America

"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."

RL says the Call of Duty "goblins" that destroyed CS for years are the same people who are now trying to leave CS. "The nerve to treat a game where the fans, and the community, and the TO's were nothing but good to you." "To just kick the players out now and go and leave and say 'It just doesn't make financial sense.' Oh you'll slither back when we have a major though for them stickers won't you."
There's a cascading effect in NA where people don't bother with CS anymore and people like Chaos suffer.
He says NA team owners are incompetent for always wanting it easy and always wanting a guarantee on their investment without skill or nuance.
- RL says he would be able to market a team correctly and would have a good ROI and also points out how TSM wouldn't even be bothered to tweet that their team, which was one of the best in the world, was playing at the Major.
- He also says not all NA owners are like that, compliments and respects Jason Lake who nearly lost everything to keep Complexity going.
He then calls out the incompetence in Infinite Esports when they acquired OpTic Gaming and bought an Indian CS team.
- He says HECZ is not to blame here and that they couldn't tell forsaken was cheating when it was so obvious.
  - They measured his reaction time to the likes of dev1ce and s1mple
  - When an enemy showed up on his screen he won that duel something like 44% of the time
  - "was like the number 1 player in the world statistically"
  - He brought a laptop to their bootcamp and refused to use the high end PCs that hey provided
He respects Andy Miller (NRG CEO) and HECZ but says that the attitude of not being able to easily monetize their teams is "piss weak" and there needs to be a risk.
- He says Chaos EC shouldn't be cutting their roster and should be competent enough to be able to figure out how to make money off their team.
He says there are still opportunities in NA and people are panicking and pulling out, and says Valorant will be the same if not worse.
- He also says "bums" who couldn't even get out of groups in NA competitions, are making crazy money in Valorant and says it will continue to inflate.
He also said that he heard rumors that EG (Evil Geniuses) are done.
He also thinks that the rumors of a Valve franchised league from before was sparked up from "these lazy fabled weak NA fucking team owners basically trying to see if Valve would bite at the hook if it was dangled and they didn't"
- Slasher says NA team owners are really in favor of franchised leagues because they want to make more money. "Most of the powerful team owners right now are on board with ditching this third party organization structure, or they are trying to play this power politics with all the TOs, and that is contributing to a lot of the problems there"
RL says that Riot has proved they can run a franchised league (LCS) and will be profitable in 2021 which is what a lot of team owners care about and says the competition will only serve to snatch people away from CS.
RL continues to say, "I am so sick and tired of what we have done to this scene, I am just exhausted with it." "I think we have legitimately fucked it, I really think we have. I think we're staring into almost like a CGS (Championship Gaming Series) wasteland in NA." "Counter-Strike esports is a fucking joke."

Talent

"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."

RL says that people like Sean Gares and ddk switching over to Valorant isn't for financial reasons because they are making less over there.
He points out that TO's can't even give talent a 3 month in advance calendar.
Because of the pandemic TO's won't hire certain people and some people are working more hours for the same money.
He says we as a community don't respect journalists enough which is why we don't have good journalists.
- He also says DeKay is leaving the scene soon and that Thorin is close to leaving also
He says he had to talk a caster down from quitting and was struggling to find reasons.
He says that DreamHack told Vince they would hire him but not if he wants to stick with dusT and says that this is the norm in esports. "Constant leveraging of people against each other." and says this is why we don't have a talent union.
New gen casters are getting put into shit situations and the community's reaction to them is adding fuel to the fire
He says the reason Moses left was because of the terrible conditions
He says that Anders had to constantly leave his family and kid because someone fucked up or broke promises and had to constantly tell his kid to their face that "daddy can't be home this weekend."
He says that esports has always been a lie to sell you this dream, "Meanwhile there's about 2% of the cunts getting all the checks."

Valve

"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"

Slasher says that the larger aspect of esports as a whole compared to other entertainment mediums and Valve's lack of inattention are the bigger problems. He continues saying that the fact that Valve let their game be ran as an esport, they need to take on the responsibilities of it.
- Both Slasher and RL wants Valve to take control but not on the level of Riot Games, there needs to be a balance.
In case it was ever a question: Gabe Newell has been to 0 CSGO Majors.
RL calls Valve out saying they could have done something during the gambling era.
He says Valve used to come to the majors, but doesn't think they do anymore.
RL had met with Valve at the Cluj-Napoca Major and had tried to appeal iBP's indefinite punishment and had also gave Brax's life story:
- A recent family member passed away, they had lost a lot of income, they had to live in trailer, iBuyPower did not pay any salaries, and was pressured by family to make money who didn't support his career.
- RL said that Valve told him, "How dare you try and make us feel guilty." "We shouldn't feel bad about enforcing the only thing that matters that we need to make players afraid of: cheating and match fixing"
- RL also tried to share other info about match fixing and nothing came of it
RL points out that Source 2 or a new engine is not something you will want based on the experience of transitioning from CS 1.6 to CS:S. "Valve's track record with brand new engines being launched, not fucking great from what I remember."
Slasher says "If there is anything the community should do, is pressure Valve to hire a community manager."
- They say that we need a commissioner, a community manager (not the person who runs the Twitter who posts memes all day), then we need to have a circuit
RL reiterates that Valve doesn't care about CS esports and says they need to change the culture at Valve to make them care about CS esports
- Slasher says a systemic problem is making it so working on CSGO would be a bad decision for you as an employee for Valve
He also hasn't talked to Valve in ages and have sent over bugs and cheats and doesn't get emails back anymore
Slasher says we should be directing attention at the developer leads, pointing out Ido Magal, if he even is still the project lead
- RL thinks that Ido and Brian are the only people that "vaguely even give a fuck about CS" and were the only people that RL recalled that actually read Reddit and paid attention from time to time
"It is really fucking precarious. Somebody has got to step the fuck up and start giving a shit"
- Slasher suggests org owners, with CSPPA, with ESIC, with TOs have a concerted effort against Valve
"Riot Games are doing better things than Valve in the esports space" which is something RL didn't think he'd say.
"People who used to be talent, working with unions, arguing with other talent, when the unions fucked them over, can't understand their perspective, TOs fucking over broadcast talent, broadcast talent wanting to leave and go and work for orgs, orgs having no money, Valve might take coaches away because all the coaches are cheating, ESIC has about 4 people in a fucking call doing the investigations, everyone thinks they're spies for ESL, ESL are just the evil fucking overlords wanting to rule the scene and will just somehow, like cockroaches outliving a nuclear bomb, and Valve are in a fucking holiday in Hawaii thinking about the next Dota character because they don't give a fuck about us."

Closing Statements

"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."

RL compared the Counter-Strike scene to the people on the Titanic who ran around with guns robbing people while the boat was sinking.
"We have given up on being a respectable esports scene." "We are now a conduit to make money for those who want to just milk it, just have one last ride, one last roll of the dice. It's done." "What a fucking mess. What have we done to our fucking scene?"
"There's just too much self-interest driving all of this." "I don't see a way we stop the dominoes." "When it's that bad, when there's that many dishonest people that ESIC have to come out and say that if we punish them all there's no one left. What does that tell you?"
"How many opportunities have we had to clean house? How many times have we said, 'this must never happen again', and another scandal." "The entire skins betting operations was the biggest criminal conspiracy in esports ever executed and no one has been punished for it." "The people who could be driving that don't want to."
"Right now people are fans of those organizations because the scene has value. It is worth being a fan of Astralis because they are excellent at Counter-Strike. It is worth being a fan of s1mple because he is the best player in Counter-Strike, maybe the exception of ZywOo. If the scene is devalued, if the scene loses its meaning, those things lose its meaning too, and people will leave, people will stop tuning into the games. I have seen it happen in multiple esports, this is not my first time at the rodeo. I am getting big Brood War vibes right now and I don't like it."
"The role you play in all of this as fans, as viewers, as listeners, as consumers of esports content, it's absolutely imperative that you know who the good guys are. It's absolutely imperative that you use your voice. It's absolutely imperative that when things are bad, you know who, at least, is trying to make them good, and you have to apply your criticism to the right targets."
- He continues saying it's no good in continuing to attack ESIC and saying how they are bad, ESIC have it hard
He says CSPPA are on the right side of the argument on BLAST but have been on the wrong side of many arguments many times.
- "If you are not willing to stand along side the weakest member of the union, with the least amount of influence, and the least amount of power, then it is not a union at all and you shouldn't pose as one." "You wanna serve a bunch of special interest do it, everyone else in esports fucking does, but do not pose as something you are not." "We love the players. I've been fighting for players rights for as long as I've been able to, but the CSPPA is not what we needed."
  - "They are not applying the pressure to the right people, they are not fighting the right battles, they are not helping their weaker members."
He says what orgs have done by keeping or hiring coaches is bad. "When you give up on holding an appreciable standard, you've lost the scene" "Competition matters, rules matter, punishments matter, achievements matter, excellence matters" "If you start stripping that away, you have nothing" "You guys need to take that knowledge and apply it sensibly."
"Valve has sold you all down the river, they sold everyone in the esports scene down the river, tournament organizers are selling their talent down the river. Don't hate on them for sounding tired after a 16 hour day. Don't hate on them because the hype for a matchup they've seen for the 20th time in the past 3 months, they can't be as excited or it sounds contrived. Support your guys, they're there for you, these are your people."
"This community has got to start acting like one for the first fucking time. Just put the petty shit away, let's try and fix this fucking scene while we still have one to save."
"You can't rely on Valve, you can't rely on ESL, you can't rely on the CSPPA, you can't rely on anyone." "Once again, it's gonna be the likes of us, the amateurs, the people who give a fuck, rolling up our sleeves and grafting." "I'm old and tired and I don't want to have to do it again. People need to pick up the torch and do it."
- "Like Michal did, like Dudenhoeffer did. You see something wrong, fix it. You see somebody doing something wrong, call it out. If you think something could be better, let people know."
"Vote with your wallets if you're not happy with the direction Valve goes in. If when we do get to the Major, they serve up another subpar, same old bullshit stickers and signatures package again, do not buy it."
- "You're a powerful block and if you use it correctly we can fucking avert this disaster."
"I'm not doing another year in this broken, bust-up fucking scene, where everyone is miserable, everyone is broke, everyone is tired, and everyone is trying to fucking rob everyone else, blind, while the fucking people who are meant to be protecting you, are just fucking enhancing it and lining their own pockets."
- "I'm not doing it anymore and you shouldn't want to do it either."
"I stand by every fucking thing I said. I mean it, because this game fucking matters to me, this scene fucking matters to me. I put my life into this, my adult life, and to see it in this state is fucking sad."

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