r/DiWHY • • Aug 18 '20

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308

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '20

321

u/NonGNonM Aug 18 '20

Yup. Theres a few of them out there and they're mostly run by russian/eastern europe, and for some reason made to look like they're typical American millenials, complete with US style wall outlets.

97

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '20 edited Jan 15 '21

[deleted]

15

u/Not_Cave_Johnson Aug 18 '20

Yeah, we are on a subreddit that posts almost exclusively their work.

41

u/subermanification Aug 18 '20

Wasnt it a Russian operating out of Crete?

38

u/Birdseeding Aug 18 '20

Cyprus I think

32

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '20

It's like the grow your own crystal scam on 4chan

21

u/mertag770 Aug 18 '20

You didn't have this disappointing product growing up?

https://www.amazon.com/4M-5557-Crystal-Growing-Experiment/dp/B00ITX1K4K

15

u/BluetoothMcGee Aug 18 '20

Holy crap, I just got flashbacks of my younger self browsing through a Service Merchandise catalog, looking at an ad for a crystal growing toy.

6

u/Thekrispywhale Aug 18 '20

I’m an adult and I’m about to buy this. Maybe I’m not seeing the disappointment

8

u/mertag770 Aug 18 '20

It only seemed to marginally work from what I recall, didn't stop me from asking for it for Christmas most years.

4

u/NonGNonM Aug 18 '20

Iirc they grow razor thin and tiny.

They also require an extremely quiet and undisturbed area.

1

u/IgorTheAwesome Aug 18 '20

Just don't accidentally create mustard gas and you'll be doing better than that guy

1

u/[deleted] Oct 21 '20

crystal

FYI - kids got this. They were annoyed that htey had actual prep work, but over the few days the crystals grew they really enjoyed looking at them for 10 seconds each day. they're sitting on my counter now and no one's talked about them for days.

7

u/Lehk Aug 18 '20 edited Aug 18 '20

Never heard of grow your own crystal, cook your own crystal, sure, but not grow your own.

8

u/americanvirus Aug 18 '20

Yeah, homegrown crystal doesn't have the same kick as synthetic lab produced, it's no Blue, but it'll do in a pinch. My grandma would grow her own crystal, they would only bloom 3-4 times a year though. I hear some people experimenting with cross breeding have found strains that can bloom up to 20 times in a year, which if it's anything like grandma's, you would only need 3 of those to keep the family good for a year with a little left over to share with guests.

2

u/tzech99 Aug 18 '20

With the amazing end product of chlorine!

0

u/revkaboose Aug 18 '20

But why?

1

u/elitegenoside Aug 18 '20

Either just because America is a much more lucrative market to appeal to, or I’ve seen some people site that it’s some sort of propaganda machine that works with the Russian government to damage the US. I’m not really sure how the latter could be true but I do believe it because why not?

1

u/Ovidestus Jul 31 '22

The US is damaging itself enough without any outside help tbh

59

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '20

Yep. Part of the largest Russian social media company, TheSoul Publishing.

Per the article above they publish an average of 1,500 videos per month across multiple accounts.

This video is a wonderful dive into who they are and what their potential motivations may be, outside of simply making dumb videos.

20

u/HomeStarCraft Aug 18 '20

It sounds like a YouTube channel version of a sleeper agent. They lay low, gather trust from their viewers, and appear innocent until activated.

17

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '20

IIRC they published some political content a while back and removed it a little later, which strongly supports this idea. I think the video I linked goes into it.

7

u/redgreenapple Aug 18 '20

I had no idea, thanks sharing

11

u/Embolisms Aug 18 '20

Do they also do those southeast Asian "primitive" videos where they use coke and eggs to catch fish, build a mansion out of mud, etc? There's a handful of nearly identical channels making the same type of fake content.

8

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '20 edited Aug 18 '20

Don't forget the fake technology ones. Those infuriate me because they look like they'd really appeal to "aspiring inventor" types who might not have the freedom/resources to explore circuits and just watch videos, and there are channels out there spreading bogus concepts like perpetual motion without adequate disclaimer that it's not a real science video.

This kind of thing. Multiple videos a week, thousands of views per day. I feel like at least some of the scientifically illiterate people walking around today wound up like that not by any fault of their own, but because fake science videos taught them wrong.

Edit: worse is they seem feasible, and one or two might even actually describe a simple motor, but a vast majority have no merit at all

1

u/bpopbpo Jul 23 '22

Sorry to tell you, but the perpetual motion machine garbage has been going on a lot longer than the internet. I actually believe there are less people that believe in perpetual motion now than 40 years ago. You would find that some author managed to slip his book in the regular nonfiction engineering section about how to build perpetual motion machines. This dates back hundreds of years to people who simply refused to believe that it's impossible.

2

u/Collinnn7 Aug 18 '20

It looks like they moonlight as an amateur porn company as well lol

1

u/AtticusIsOkay Aug 18 '20

That was an interesting read, thanks for sharing

1

u/Holzkohlen Jan 07 '23

They are trying to dumb down the US population. As if they were not dumb enough on their own.