Crypt-ID @crypt-id - Tumblr Blog

Do you think the Simon Blackquill blog is also run by the same person?

Old Ask that I never got around to. No, I don’t… That blog is far too well-established and hardly ever joins the whole alkenmayer discourse. I think Blackquill just got mixed in because of the name, and occasionally has some fun with it.

#Ask #simon alkenmayer #the experiment

Do you still believe Simon and the Fool are the same person now that the Fool has stopped posting about Simon?

What do you know, someone is still reading this blog!

i guess I should interrupt my hiatus and answer your question, Anon.

The Fool is still posting about Simon and answering asks about him, although it’s true it’s much less frequent, and his blog seems to focus more on other projects. I admit this has largely made me reconsider my theory that they are the same person. I suppose they could still be working together, but I’m not sure why Simon would continue referencing the Fool if they were planning to let the “simonalkenmayerisdead” blog change function.

Maybe Simon wants to see if his audience will still support him and agree with him when ”the Antagonist” is less of a polarizing presence? Honestly I haven’t made up my mind yet.

Hope this answers your question, Anon.

#Asks #simon alkenmayer #simonalkenmayerisdead #the experiment

If you believe that Simon and The Fool are the same person, then what do you make of sweetpucks/wildecniht's posts about the harassment of The Fool, in which he alleges that The Fool is his best friend? Since there is someone claiming a close personal connection to The Fool, do you believe he is in on it or do you believe that he is being deceived by his "friend"?

You have to remember that there have been, and still are, also people who claim Simon is their close friend. The truth is that it could be either and we have no way of knowing.

I’m curious how you explain the screenshots of Simon encouraging a minor to take out a huge, unnecessary loan? Or telling a person with a disorder that their mental illness is offensive to their monstersona?

Are these just instances of the writer wanting to see what reactions their followers will have to Simon giving well documented, egregiously harmful advice?

I’m not sure what you are asking here?

The Author generally interacts with Simon’s blog followers as Simon and answers asked questions accordingly. I can’t know for sure what of the things Simon says are the author’s actual beliefs and what is said in the spirit of “the experiment”. Neither of the instances you mention is “egregiously harmful advice” in my opinion, nor do I have any way of knowing what else was said outside the published screenshots. (And of course screenshots can be faked, as Simon/the Fool have mentioned recently. I’m not implying any specific screenshots are faked, just pointing it out as a general reminder.)

Keep in mind that I’m not aiming to justify or judge the correctness of anything Simon/the Fool says here. I’m just discussing my thoughts on the “experiment”.

#simon alkenmayer #the experiment #ask #anon

simonalkenmayeris-still-dead

From that crypt-id post:

>Simon has not doxed any of their former friends who have turned against them, even though those were people who supposedly had NDAs and Simon would have had their names and addresses, photos will have been shared in the Discord server, etc.<

Anyone who signed an NDA also has Simon’s info and could retaliate by sharing it (good luck taking someone to court over a home made NDA covering the character you’re roleplaying online... not to mention the case would likely end up on public record with real names attached). And if sparklyemojiheart’s screenshots are anything to go by, those former friends might also have a lot of fucked up conversations saved that would make Simon look terrible, so not worth the risk.

pretty sure there's a reason Simon replies to enquiries about his former friends with "who?"

WAIT also what's with this assumption that people share photos online? that image is the ONLY image of me online. What are you people doing? Did nobody teach you proper online safety?

crypt-id

This ask from The Fool’s blog gives me a nice opening to talk about the NDAs

I would normally say that we can’t even know that the NDAs were really in existence, but as it turns out I was shown (at least) one of them so some of them, at least, are really a thing. They don’t, however, contain any information for Simon other than the name “Simon Alkenmayer”. They do contain information of the person signing the NDA.

Now, this is very interesting to me. To be clear, I still don’t know for sure that everyone who claimed to have an NDA actually had one, but some definitely did.

Do we know for sure that the NDA holders got to know the Author’s true identity? I doubt it. My source did not.

I think it’s interesting that people would sign an NDA with what they know is not Simon’s real name (even canonically, Alkenmayer is not his legal last name.)

Did they not bother to check if such an NDA would be legally enforceable? Did they just not care? Were they in on the “experiment”?

I doubt it’s the latter (at least for most of the NDAs.) And I’m not a legal expert but I think it’s fairly likely that the NDAs are not legally enforceable without Simon’s true name on them. (The Fool has claimed as much a number of times, and this could easily be a part of the experiment too. Would the NDA holders take the word of the Antagonist seriously enough to check? Would it change their behavior?)

In any case, both the fact that the NDA I got to see had no identifying information about Simon and the fact that none of the NDA holders have actually come forward with any proof* leave me fairly certain that few (if any) NDA holders actually knew Simon’s real identity.

Which brings me back to the fact that Simon, who is described as petty and vindictive by his critics, didn’t publish any of the information he would have had at hand already but supposedly spent hours trawling through social media to find the only photograph of the Fool in existence, posted it with no comment, and got the Fool to helpfully confirm it was in fact his face (when he could very easily have kept quiet and no one would have been the wiser.)

To me this was a big factor in convincing me that Simon Alkenmayer and Simonalkenmayerisdead are actually part of the same “experiment”.

* (I’m leaving aside the post by Vampireapologist, which in my opinion was too vague and generic to count as actual confirmation of Simon’s identity; plus there were a number of issues with it that make me take it with a sizeable pinch of salt, but that’s just me.)

simonalkenmayeris-still-dead

Interesting how you "leave aside" anything that doesn't conform to your view. You know when we try to prove things in science, we do it by looking for things that don't conform to our hypothesis, right?

Also, why haven't YOU checked whether those NDAs were legally enforceable, if you're so interested? It's pretty obvious they weren't just from the descriptions, and I never even saw one.

crypt-id

Fair, but I’m not the one running the “experiment”. I’m just sharing my interpretation of what’s happening, and the clues I’ve found that led me to my conclusions. Anyone is free to agree or disagree.

I haven’t checked because I was never offered one, I hadn’t seen one until recently, and the actual legalities are not the issue here.

We have one side of the experiment offering NDAs, the other side saying they’re not enforceable, and the interest I have in this is to see what the audience does with this information.

Just as it doesn’t interest me whether this is a good experiment, or a novel concept, or done better by others in the past. I’m just interested in figuring out what the intention of the person running it is, for the purposes of this blog.

PS: I am leaving out Vampireapologist because that post is an outlier, but more importantly because Vampireapologist is a named person with a strong presence across multiple social media, face and real name well known, and I am aiming to avoid dragging named people into this blog. I do have very strong thoughts on why that post didn’t make sense to me as proof of anything. I am not sharing them at this point out of respect and consideration, because Mallaidh Anne has left tumblr and seems to want to stay out of this whole affair. The same reasoning applies on why I will not be discussing Kris Meister.

#simon alkenmayer #simonalkenmayerisdead #the experiment #Vampireapologist

The Fool also has a separate Tumblr that has nothing to do with Simon and does not ever interact with him in anyway.

And I’m sure you understand there is no proof of this, or of who you are

Not to mention that it doesn’t mean anything. No one said that whoever is running the experiment doesn’t have other interests too.

#ask #anon

One of the biggest issues with your theory I have is that The Fool also has a separate Twitter that largely has nothing to do with Simon

So does Kris.

#ask #anon

simonalkenmayeris-still-dead

The Illogic of The Experiment

I can't find the other breakdown I did of this, so I guess I'm rewriting it.

This Tumblr blog is only one part of an immersive publishing & social media experiment to evaluate humanity's use of fiction as a tool. Modern man is exposed to fiction on an almost constant basis with terrible effects on cognition. Meaning you've created so many fictions to deal with harsh realities, like the existence of my species, that you've succeeded in making it easier for us to hide. I am uniquely qualified to run this experiment, you see, because I actually exist. You, however, being familiar with Tumblr—where the Otherkin run amok—and all the other RPGs of the last few decades, are desensitized and find this pretentious.

This is from Simon's tumblr bio. I imagine we're all familiar with it by now.

Now before I break down the bad faith of this "argument" I do quickly want to draw your attention to this sentence:

Meaning you've created so many fictions to deal with harsh realities, like the existence of my species, that you've succeeded in making it easier for us to hide.

The large majority of tumblr users read this the way Simon means them to, and I ordinarily wouldn't point it out, I just think it's funny because it says literally the opposite of what he wants it to.

You see, "fictions" is the object of the sentence, which means when Simon refers to the existence of his species, he's referring to it as a fiction.

Anyway, back to the rationale. Let's break it down.

What Simon actually means is that human being use fiction to deal with reality. This is a fairly obvious allusion to religion, and it's an appeal to others who've been disillusioned by religion.

I personally believe the author's unresolved issues with religion may be at the heart of Simon's entire existence, but I won't go into that now.

But let's take a closer look at Simon's logic here. I'll even write it out in standard form.

1. Humans use fiction to deal with reality 1a. The use of fiction has terrible effects on cognition. 2. Simon is a real monster 2a. Simon is uniquely qualified to run his "experiment" 3. Tumblr users are used to fictional portrayals ∴ If Simon creates a tumblr account, we will not believe he is real

This makes perfect sense. It makes so much sense that you can write it out as a formal argument.

Why then, does Simon feel the need to say using fiction has "terrible effects on cognition"? Presuming he was doing a study, and not simply mucking about on the internet, it would bias his results as people try to prove they have superior intelligence and won't be taken in by such fictions.

However, if one were trying to set up a particular power imbalance and encourage people to prove their worth, then implying that anyone who didn't believe you was naïve would be a very sensible thing to do.

crypt-id

EXACTLY this.

Which is… Just what one might do, if one wanted to study what makes social media users more likely to believe propaganda or conspiracy theories.

Your theory isn't completely terrible, but if this "experiment" is mimicking a narrative, why did Simon introduce the antagonist so late? His blog has been running for eleven years and mine has only been running for 3, whereas antagonists are usually introduced within the first quarter (often within the first 10%) of a narrative.

I didn’t say the Antagonist was the main device for the “experiment”.

Maybe he decided to introduce the Antagonist because he wasn’t getting the feedback he was hoping for. Maybe he had tried to introduce other types of “antagonist” before, and that’s the one that caught people’s attention enough to make it worthwhile. Maybe there is more than one phase in the experiment. Hell, maybe the Author just isn’t that good at planning experiments. I think rather than worrying about how soon this specific blog was introduced, I would look at the pattern of behaviors before vs after it was introduced, and at the similarities between the two characters.

Oh and thanks for the participation! 🙂

#ask #simonalkenmayerisdead #simon alkenmayer #the experiment

you take skepticism/cynicism to a whole new level and it's very thought-provoking/entertaining. your whole argument relies on "any party could be lying about anything" and you're absolutely right that on the internet you can't definitively prove anyone is telling the truth.

even if I say something like "do please try to be courteous, there are real people who have been really impacted by all this" there's no way to prove to you there are and even if there was, you'd say it's firmly the fault of the party(ies) behind the whole thing

You are absolutely right and of course I will try to be courteous. This is the main reason why I will not be speculating on the actual identity of whoever is running the experiment. I don’t intend to make any moral judgements either, but I do find the concept very interesting so that’s what I will try to stick to discussing.

Interestingly, your statement “there are real people who have been impacted by all this” is undoubtedly true, and will have been true whether there is even an experiment or not.

There is definitely one or more real people behind all the Simon-centric blogs, whatever the reason for writing the blogs might be. And the question of how much courtesy and consideration whoever is behind Simon/the Fool/any other connected blog deserves, has been part of the discourse for a while now. I actually think that’s not a coincidence at all, but more on that in another post.

#ask #alithiasigma #simon alkenmayer #simonalkenmayerisdead #the experiment