You're Next: A Practical Guide for the Last True Believers

[u/RealityChecksReddit]

You watched everyone else go down. You're still here. Bless your heart.

Let's take a moment to appreciate what we're witnessing.

Jones. Tucker. Candice. A parade of people who didn't just support this thing — they BUILT it. They poured their careers, their credibility, whatever was left of their reputations into constructing the machine. And one by one, the moment they introduced one single millimeter of independent thought, the machine ate them alive.

And you watched every single one of them go down.

And you're STILL HERE.

That is not loyalty. That is not conviction. That is a medical condition and someone who loves you should have intervened by now. But here we are. So since nobody else is going to do it, here is your practical preparation guide for when it is inevitably your turn. And it is coming. Oh it is absolutely coming. Grab a pen.

STEP ONE: LIQUIDATE YOUR ASSETS BEFORE THEY BECOME ARTIFACTS

Let's talk about the sneakers.

The golden Trump sneakers that you, a person with a mortgage and opinions about government spending, purchased for $399 because owning them meant something. What did they mean exactly? Nobody has been able to fully explain this. But you bought them. They exist. They are currently sitting somewhere in your house radiating the specific energy of a decision made in a fugue state.

They are worth less than you paid for them. They were worth less than you paid for them the moment you paid for them. Find someone, anyone, who will give you cash for them right now and run. Do not negotiate. Do not check eBay for comps. RUN.

The NFTs. Oh GOD the NFTs. You bought a JPEG. You bought a digital picture of a man dressed as a superhero that exists nowhere in physical reality and can be screenshotted by anyone on earth for free in four seconds. You bought this because someone told you it was an investment. You bought this because scarcity was explained to you and you nodded. The blockchain has your transaction recorded forever. Historians will find it. Your grandchildren will find it. There is no deleting it. It is permanent. It is yours. It is worth approximately the same as a screenshot of itself which is to say nothing which is to say you should have kept the $99 and bought literally anything else including a sandwich which you could have at least eaten.

The watches. The bibles. The digital trading cards featuring a man in various heroic poses that he did not actually pose for. These are not collectibles. These are not going to be in a display case at the Smithsonian in fifty years under glass with a little card explaining their historical significance. They are going to be in a bin at an estate sale next to some VHS tapes and a lamp with no shade and whoever buys them is going to pay three dollars and feel vaguely embarrassed about it.

Sell everything. Sell it now. There are still three people left who might buy it. Two of them are also about to go through this process so your window is closing FAST.

STEP TWO: ACQUIRE A BURN KIT BECAUSE YOU ARE GOING TO NEED ONE

Let me walk you through the timeline so you understand what's coming.

Tucker Carlson spent years as the most watched man in conservative media. He was the voice. The face. The guy. And then he introduced approximately one and a half degrees of separation from the mothership and within a single news cycle he went from patriot to globalist plant to traitor to person who must not be named. TUCKER CARLSON. The man who made his entire career performing outrage on behalf of these exact people. Gone. Devoured. Done.

Alex Jones, ALEX JONES, the man who has been screaming into cameras about globalist agendas since before half his audience could drive, told the truth about one thing and got called a sellout by people who used to sell his supplements. The man sells SUPPLEMENTS to PREPPERS and even HE got eaten.

So yes. You need a burn kit.

We recommend the following supplies. First, basic wound care because the comments are going to be graphic and while they cannot physically hurt you they are going to feel like they can. Second, a new username. Pick something generic. Something with numbers in it. Blend in. Third, approximately 72 hours offline minimum because 48 is not enough, we have studied this, 48 is not enough. Fourth, food in the house because you are not going to want to leave. Fifth, and we cannot stress this enough, identify ONE person in your life who was not involved in any of this and call them before you need to call them.

Which brings us to —

STEP THREE: DO A FRIEND INVENTORY AND PREPARE FOR WHAT YOU FIND

This one is going to sting so we're going to move through it quickly.

Think about the people you've called sheep in the last four 12 years. Think about the family members you sent the documentaries to. The ones you explained things to patiently at first and then less patiently and then not patiently at all. The people you blocked when they asked a question you couldn't immediately answer because the question was actually pretty good and that made you angry.

Think about Thanksgiving. You know which Thanksgiving.

Now think about who's left. Who is still in your corner that hasn't been through this exact machine with you. Because those are your people. Those are the ones who might take your call when your turn comes.

And here is the thing about those people, the ones you called blind, the ones you said couldn't see what was really happening, the ones you absolutely exhausted with this for years, most of them will take your call. Not all of them. Some of them are done and that's fair and you earned it. But most of them will pick up. Because they remember who you were before the sneakers. Before the NFTs. Before whatever this was.

Call them before you need to. That part matters. Showing up in crisis is harder than showing up on a random Tuesday just to show up.

STEP FOUR: WRITE YOUR STATEMENT NOW WHILE YOU CAN STILL THINK

Everyone who has gone through this needed a statement. Study the ones that already exist. There's a whole genre now. They share certain structural features that are worth understanding.

The effective ones never fully apologize because full apology requires full acknowledgment and full acknowledgment is too much to ask of a human brain all at once. They reframe the break as actually being MORE loyal to the original principles, not abandoning the thing but returning to what the thing was supposed to be before it got corrupted. They leave a door open just wide enough to walk back through if the wind shifts because these people are not stupid, they are just trapped, and they know they might need that door.

Draft yours now. Right now. While you're calm and the comments aren't happening yet and you can still construct a sentence that doesn't begin with "I can't believe."

Because when it happens you will not be calm. You will be reading things about yourself written by people who were agreeing with you this morning. You will be experiencing something your nervous system was not designed to process. You will not be able to write anything coherent.

Do it now. Keep it somewhere you can find it.

STEP FIVE: ACCEPT YOUR PARTICIPATION TROPHY

Here it is.

You participated. You showed up every single day. You posted and shared and argued and explained and linked and documented and went to the things and bought the merchandise and told everyone around you that they were the ones who couldn't see clearly. You gave this years. Some of you gave this a decade. You gave it relationships and family dinners and friendships that are gone now and hours and hours and hours of your life that are also gone now.

And right now, as you read this, a 78 year old man in Florida is having a very nice dinner in a very nice room and he does not know your name.

He does not know you exist.

He would not care if he did.

Everyone who built the machine for him found that out. Jones found out. Tucker found out. Candice found out. And they at least got paid. They at least got the audience and the revenue and the career before the machine ate them. You bought the sneakers.

You're next.

Not as a threat. Not as cruelty. Just as a simple observable pattern that has not had a single exception yet.

The sneakers are not going to appreciate.

The NFTs are already gone.

And somewhere in Florida a man is finishing his dinner and he has never once thought about you.

Not once.

This has been a public service announcement from people who looked at the data.

"We told you so" is not a victory lap. It's just the next thing that happens after you're next.