From: https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/mtyk40/superstonk_is_sus_an_investigation_into/

Link to post 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/mtyjbi/superstonk_is_sus_an_investigation_into/

Dates: April 11th to 12th, edits on 17th.

So far we have only looked at amateur manipulators. On the other hand, professional manipulators are selectively trained experts, often have years of practise, and are supported by large institutions with access to substantial resources – usually the police, military, or 3 letter agencies. Unravelling a professional undercover plot is significantly harder than recognising amateur manipulation.

When an undercover operative first approaches a community they intend to infiltrate, there are a few specific things they will do to ensure they are not suspected from the start, as well as some notable behaviours they may exhibit over time. Understanding these can make them possible to spot, and while they definitely don’t guarantee that someone is an undercover, they do serve as good indicators.

General indicators of an undercover:

1. Having an uncanny but powerful charisma about them, though often expressed subtly. Meeting a professional manipulator ‘in character’ is a truly bizarre experience in hindsight. Essentially it feels like encountering someone for the first time that you’ve somehow already known your entire life. Their subtle behaviours, such as vocal inflections, mannerisms and facial expressions, feel weirdly familiar, almost nostalgic, as if from someone you knew from before you can remember. Most people are put at ease by this, becoming more relaxed and open, but if you look very carefully (without making them aware you are doing this), it is sometimes possible to detect the inauthenticity just beneath the superficial surface.

2. Being keen to provide upfront explanation (justification) for any character incongruities in their appearance, behaviour, or backstory. This is to cover anything that may otherwise make them look out of place in the community, and the explanations given will ultimately be unverifiable – it may be technically possible to prove, but this proof itself is either implausible to obtain, or could be easily faked.

3. Being vague or evasive about their history, and providing unsubstantiated and unverifiable ‘facts’ that aren’t positively reflected in their character. This is important, as being vague means no truth is committed to – they can be more flexible later if needed, and are less likely to be caught contradicting themselves. When (gently and carefully) pushed, they will typically produce something more, but once they say anything concrete it can’t be undone, so it must be committed to memory.

4. Sometimes in crucial conversations, particularly when discussing activist-related theory or personal motivations, they sound more like they’re speaking from memory than intuition. This one is very difficult to describe, but basically their speech will be slightly more uniform and consistent in an uncanny way, as well as subtly ‘flat’ sounding – relative to how they regularly speak, of course. Basically, it will sound rehearsed. On the other hand, if someone really believes in the ideas and goals of the group they’re in, this is usually apparent in the enthusiasm and spontaneous energy in their language.

5. Doing something illegal early on. Most people naturally find it difficult to believe someone could be a cop if they, for example, take hard drugs, vandalise a bank, or fight other cops in the street (all happened btw). The crime(s) will be done with or in front of trusted members of the community, who then become believable accounts that ‘prove’ the undercover can also be trusted.

6. Taking on a workload, or demonstrating a skill-set, that is disproportionately greater than what can normally be expected. Any undercover cop will have a small team working behind the scenes to provide them with intelligence briefings, character guidance, and supporting materials. Accordingly, undercover cops will often seem to become surprisingly good at everything within just a short period of time, and will simply be able to get more stuff done than others can.

7. Providing somewhat different behavioural narratives (including stated motivations, desires and goals) to different people, then performing actions that are subtly inconsistent with all of them, but still technically ‘fit’. In other words, they are two-faced, but very good at getting away with it. This is how it appears when someone is setting narrative absences while masking their behavioural anomalies in a cohered manner. This can be particularly difficult to spot, but having information from multiple perspectives can make it easier… Assuming you know the people you’re conferring with aren’t undercovers as well.

8. Bringing more sus people in. Getting the first undercover inside is the hardest part, but once one cop is reasonably trusted they can start slowly introducing others. These additional undercovers can often be even more suspect and unverifiable than the original, because a key aspect of their trustworthiness is they already know someone ‘trusted’.

It is a common misconception, often reinforced in the Hollywood spy genre, that undercovers work alone. In reality, undercovers rarely work alone; where there is one, there are others to back them up and support them. Once they are settled into the community, they don’t stop there either, as the eventual aim is for them to have full control. This usually comes about through a structured pattern of sowing confusion, manipulating inter-personal drama, then initiating a significant event that will (to the keen eye) usually resemble a ploy of some kind. This can be a soft organisational coup, but most of the time members are too wary to let something like that happen. More often, undercovers instead gain control of the community by engineering a conflict, instigating a split, and forming a new group where they informally take charge. The greater the outrage they can manufacture against the original group, and the more people they can bring over to the new one, the greater the success of the operation. ^{Does this sound familiar?}

In the build-up to the ploy, undercovers will typically fall into either a general ‘leader’ or ‘support’ role.

The leader is the most common role for an undercover, and in my experience they are usually cisgender males. While they may begin as a fairly quiet background character, their final form is never simply a lurker; their goal is not merely to observe, but to influence. For example, in activist groups, surprisingly it is frequently the most militant, active and ‘with it’ people that turn out to be cops (not saying most active militants are cops, but that most undercovers perform as active militants). They do this to position themselves as an informal leader within an otherwise leaderless organisation, and steer the group towards their own ends.

Two indicators for a leading undercover:

9) Controlling the discourse. What they say may not always make the most sense, but they will be vocal, persuasive, and project a vibe of authority without really seeming to try. They are often keen to chair meetings, plan agendas, and finalise written statements. Basically they tend to get their own way without it coming across like that.

10) Accruing status, and then choosing to utilise it. This is one of the late signs of power formation, and may be difficult to reverse once it has gotten this far. At this point, they are not yet properly in the position of informal leadership, but they likely hold a small sphere of influence within the wider community. Behaviours will include gently pushing people towards actions they may not wish to take otherwise, passively dominating decision making through having multiple allies, and carefully praising or rewarding people as if they are an authority.

For a leading undercover, general indicators tend to be possible to spot because they’re always ultimately trying to achieve something overarching, rather than simply vibing while having personal goals. They swim upstream, so cannot help but be in motion – we can detect this motion. Also because their true motivations are concealed, we can expect to see their ‘character arc’ evolve in a slightly incoherent and disjointed manner. Once the ploy is revealed, it may be possible to reasonably confirm they are an undercover, but until that moment it’s all just suspicions – hence why these cases are rarely solved until too late.

The support is the next most common role adopted by an undercover, and they only ever exist in relation to an undercover leader. They tend to be more difficult to identify, as their primary narrative functions tend to be indirect and less obvious. Typically their purpose is to facilitate the leading undercover in positioning themselves as a leader, while minimising suspicion against both of them. It is common for a support character to act in a romantic relationship with their respective leader.

Some indicators for a supporting undercover:

11) Humanising a suspect leader. This includes confirming their context and background (“Oh yeah we go way back, we actually met on a bus in 2013...”), discussing their character while they aren’t around (not necessarily in an entirely positive way, just talking about them as if they’re real), and publicly performing (rehearsed) dialogues allowing the leader to temporarily appear vulnerable or flawed in a controlled setting.

12) Giving frequent explanation and excuses for a suspect leader’s behaviour. “How come you’re saying this now when a month ago you said the opposite?”; “Amazing how you’re able to do so much organising and still hold down a full-time job – where is it you work again?”; “Woah, where did you get all this great intel from anyway?” If the leader is constantly seen as being on the defensive and having to justify themselves, it raises suspicions. A support can jump in to respond, or more commonly, anticipate questions that are likely to be asked, then provide answers upfront and unprompted during semi-related discussion when the leader isn’t around.

13) Consistently upholding a suspect leader’s account of the truth. This means siding with them during simple ‘he said, she said’ disagreements, helping twist current narratives to align with the leader’s goals, and including the same crucial, fabricated detail(s) when recounting historical events.

Support indicators are much harder to spot, mostly because they are so benign at face value, and can all be easily misattributed to any normal person. Before the ploy takes place, a support undercover will effectively only be suspect through their proximal relationship to a much more suspect leading undercover – suspicion through overly-convenient association. Once the ploy is executed, then it becomes more clear who the support undercovers are, as they tend to play a central role in whatever transpires – guilt through being complicit.

There are two other types of undercover cop roles I have noted in the past.

The ‘device/diversion’ undercover is an actor with a more specific role, usually revolved around indirectly facilitating the ploy in some way. By basically only being an object in the plan, it usually doesn’t matter how suspect they are, as they are not visibly moving anything along. This means they can also serve effectively as a punching-bag for suspicions, as for some reason most regular people in these situations tend to only be suspicious of one person at a time. They can usually be identified by general indicators.

The final type is ‘monitor’. This is an undercover role that is generally assumed to exist, but it’s almost impossible to tell who they may be. Their entire purpose is to simply exist in the background, watching everything happen, and memorising as much key information as possible. They will typically be someone unassuming, quiet, and boring. This won’t be relevant to our situation here, as Reddit is already a public platform.

The fact we’re dealing with a potential manipulation in the digital world does somewhat alter the playing field. Indicator 1 will be impossible to find, as this can only be seen during direct face-to-face contact. It will be substantially harder to identify indicator 4, as only having access to recorded audio means a lot of quality is lost. I also cannot say much for indicator 8 because I was not close to the mod team at all. However, since everything is publicly available and stored for later viewing, indicator 7 should be easier to spot.

Dates: April 12th to 16th.

Note: The following is effectively a journal of the investigation I conducted into rensole over a period of several days. I wrote each part as I found things of interest, and they remain unaltered, so you can follow along with my discoveries as they unfold.

The rensole account was created on August 12th 2015. There are six small posts on various disparate subs between it’s creation and January 2021, only one of which was made within the last 4 years. On January 29th 2021, shortly after the gamma squeeze caught the attention of higher powers, rensole makes his first posts since summer 2019, asking for karma on two different ‘free karma’ subs.

Hmm, ok weird start.

The title of the first one explicitly states a motivation for doing this: “can’t post anywhere I’m interested in”. Remember indicator 2? This is a character incongruity, a gap in who we expect rensole is, that he has decided to try and explain away completely unprompted. It may be a chance decision, but it could also have been written deliberately as cover. Now of course, this means very little on its own, but let’s continue looking.

Rensole’s first written piece (after posting his position on [r/]wallstreetbets and a video) is casually titled “The psych of this all”, and was posted to [r/]GME on February 6th 2021. This is particularly interesting for two reasons. Firstly, he includes a short passage about his history in the opening, even though it is largely irrelevant to the rest of the text. This again hits indicator 2 again, providing background and explanation to the character for anyone looking back in the future. It’s also quite vague, setting off indicator 3. Secondly, and even more interestingly, the post is actually a warning about basic FUD, and how social-psychology may be used to deceive us.

“Ok hold up, how can you possibly think the person warning us about FUD is actually the FUD master?”

Exactly! Remember indicator 5? Doing something illegal is only the ‘opposite’ when we’re dealing with undercover cops. What would be the opposite here, in a digital community on the lookout for shills? Providing intel on FUD of course. So now when anyone goes through rensole’s account history and looks at the first substantial post, they find a warning about FUD and a brief history of the user… That’s awfully convenient, as it’s about enough to satisfy most casual investigators, despite still being somewhat sus and completely unverified.

On February 7th, rensole reposts this piece to [r/]DeepFuckingValue, then posts a follow up to both subs later the same day. This second post, also casually titled ‘Psychology 2 Electric boogaloo, PSYOPS which were used’, expands significantly on the first. It presents a 10 step plan for how psychological operations are implemented, discusses how these tactics may be used against us (even going as far as saying they are likely to promote a division), and provides historical examples of PSYOPS. It could be a legit piece written by anyone. On the other hand, it could also be the writing team doubling down on their strategy because the first post isn’t quite convincing enough on its own (more indicator 5 basically).

However, let’s not stop there, because if we take this line of thought further and do a closer reading of the text, we notice a few more interesting things. Firstly, all the examples of PSYOPS given are actually fairly uncomplicated ones, generally based around only simple misinformation. Additionally, when outlining the 10 stages of a PSYOP, rensole writes:

“7 product and dissemination

Normally this is where (if it was used by a military operation) it would be implemented, but due to time constraints I believe they started right after the “planning” phase in 3

8 Implementation

Putting it to use, again I believe the implementation begon at point 3”

He seems to be saying that the master plan PSYOP is already in effect.

In fact, the broad message of the post implies that straightforward FUD and disinformation is the totality of their strategy, and while it does say this may somehow lead to a split, there is no information on how exactly this could occur. If there was actually a large, well-funded organisation carrying out a more complex operation, this type of message would be very convenient for them.

So now, when a more resilient investigator continues looking through rensole’s account after reading the first psychology post, they find another more detailed anti-FUD piece, which also gently leads them off the trail by presenting FUD as rather straight-forward. Very clever.

Once again, these could all be coincidences, we just have suspicions so far… but if I was writing an infiltrator account, this is exactly how I’d do it.

Next, we reach what rensole is most known for – the daily synopses. The first was uploaded on February 9th, and is more informal and simpler that what later comes to be the standard. These then show a week-long period of development, until February 16th, when we see the first synopsis posted in the much more organised and articulate style usually associated with rensole. When factoring in both time constraints and the need to humanise the character, it makes sense that the writing team would settle on this quick development window; no development would look too sus, slow development takes too long. Around this time rensole starts adding the ‘stonks’ meme at the beginning of each post, solidifying the character as a post-ironic, casual authority figure.

From here, rensole’s character starts building the ‘cool news reporter boss man’ reputation, uploading consistent summaries of important developments in GME. In the February 24th synopsis, the aesthetic is finalised with the introduction of the now well-known ‘I’m Ron Burgundy’ end-card, which remains indefinitely to cement the character of the newsreader.

The image of the news anchor, cultivated by the mainstream media, is that of the ‘arbiter of truth’: they speak in an authoritative manner, and are conventionally seen as objective and trustworthy. Of course, most of us will hold at least some distrust of the media, as it’s now common knowledge that they can and do write narratives of truth themselves – they are good at framing lies as reality. So the authoritative figure of the news anchor would be very useful to an undercover, not just for positioning their character as a community leader, but for having the power to subtly influence what is discussed. This hits indicator 9.

Around March 1st, rensole becomes a moderator on [r/]GME (thr0w's announcement) (indicator 10). He was added by thr0wthis4ccount4way, who as of yet I do not have reason to consider suspect. From here, we see rensole continuing to promote themselves closer to leadership, as well as early signs of mod drama brewing. On March 8th, he posts his first statement reminding everyone that he is not the “main mod”, the first of several more to follow on later dates. This may have been in response to other moderators raising complaints that rensole is becoming dominant (a behaviour supported by recent mod testaments), or it could have been unprompted. Either way, this serves the tactical function both as a diversion from rensole’s encroachment upon leadership, and as a device to reinforce his position as an emerging leader by presenting himself as having to remind everyone he isn’t actually in charge (yet). This hits indicator 7, as he seems to be actively trying to move into a position of leadership, while saying he isn’t.

Later that week, we experienced a bizarre, short-lived episode of seemingly endless [r/]wallstreetbets users donating to a gorilla sanctuary. I’m sure you remember it, for me it certainly stands out. As if out of nowhere, suddenly the entire sub was loaded full of these posts. I remember scrolling down the hot page for at least a couple minutes, baffled at the sheer volume of fluff being released. It was perfectly harmless on the surface, but something was definitely unusual here – it was unexpected in an inorganic way, as it felt like there was no natural dialectical transformation that could lead to it.

The account that uploaded the first donation post on March 13th has no post history before this, and no comment history before March 3rd. They have since posted comments at semi-regular intervals, as well as two small meme posts.

While ape sanctuary posts themselves are (superficially at least) perfectly benign, and some of the accounts creating them did look real, many were very new, or had long posting gaps before suddenly becoming active in GME related subs around late January. I remember thinking this was clearly an artificial bot wave being amplified by user generosity, but being confused as to why higher powers would go to the effort of pumping this when it seems to serve no direct tactical purpose.

Well, on March 14th, rensole addressed this in his summary of the week. He said:

“… as you can see this weekend on [r/]wallstreetbets people have been donating in small amounts to a gorilla foundation, this is not bad because of a very fine outliner.

They didn't sell their gme to do so, none of those posts even talk about gains or such, you don't see a dollar amount they're donating all they are showing is they helped a sanctuary.”

Followed by:

“Don't over focus on what they're doing, expect fuckery, but keep your eye on the prize people.”

This was addressed again in the synopsis for March 15th, where he explicitly says:

“This isn't shill tactics this is WSB doing what they've always done, spend money.”

Once again, this builds upon the convenient narrative that FUD bots are simple, and their activity won’t end up being part of a more deceptive, indirect strategy later on. Additionally, it portrays the idea that ‘weird stuff’ just happens in the GME community, and there is no need to look too closely at it. If rensole is suspect, this is likely another device/diversion play, which hits indicator 7. Regardless, this also hits indicator 9, as rensole is setting the narrative that these are not bots, despite the fact that if he is a legitimate user he cannot possibly know this.

Around the same time, on March 11th, rensole makes his first appearance on AndrewMoMoney's show, the first of two instances we (the non-mods) hear him (or the actor that plays him) speaking. At 1:22:02, Andrew asks him to introduce himself. Rensole first emphasises that his history will take a long time to explain, implying it is detailed. Next he says he has “a \*long\* background in economics, in law…”, further implying he has a detailed history, and that he has a lot of relevant experience. However, he provides no further information – we are left to fill in the narrative absences ourselves. All indicator 3.

He then segways into how he became involved with GME, saying “I’m kinda used to researching a lot of stuff, and for some reason friends of mine actually told me about GME in… mid to late January?” The first clause is again very vague, and implies rensole has experience. The second clause provides an upfront explanation for how he got into GME (indicator 2 again), which is also very vague. He says he heard about it in ‘mid to late January’, and we also know rensole didn’t post about GME before the January gamma squeeze (very late January). It could be he heard about it in mid January, and then didn’t post anything until the 29th. Regardless, his wording leaves a narrative absence so viewers will likely assume he had a history in GME since before the January gamma squeeze, while his pause and ‘questioning inflection’ leaves deniability in case anyone looks it up only to find this is unverifiable.

Shortly after, at 1:22:41 rensole says “… I’ve been researching, I’ve been posting on [r/]GME each and every day, I try to help people out with their research, like, as much as possible, uh with for example Josh… And that’s kinda all I do – Aha.” Notice after he talks himself up and ‘intros’ Josh (HeyItsPixeL), he pauses. To me this sounds like rensole setting a leading topic (how well researched and helpful he is), then passing the topic over to Josh, expecting him to jump in with support – it sounds like rensole wanted to be interrupted with praise. When Josh doesn’t say anything after a couple seconds, rensole says a ‘finishing cadence’ to close off his dialogue, just before it would have gotten long enough to sound awkward. Even more interestingly, Josh then does jump in with the praise rensole seemed to anticipate! Josh enters into a short speech about how amazing rensole is, calling him “… probably the biggest contribution to this whole community at the moment…”

Now, I do not think there is reason to believe Josh is sus. He’s been involved with GME since October, and his profile appears coherent. Unlike rensole, when he speaks he comes across as authentic – throughout his appearance, his dialogue is spontaneous, organic, and somewhat rambly, which is how most people naturally tend to talk. In my opinion, he seems intelligent and genuinely nice, and I do not want to publicly speculate on his psychology or life events without his consent. However, I will say that intelligence and kindness are traits a manipulator will tend to look for in a target – their rationality and good will means consistence and predictability, which are more easily exploitable. If you’re reading this Josh, please feel free to reach out to me and we can discuss this further in confidence.

Later, at 1:49:50, on the topic of people wrongly thinking Josh isn’t who he says he is, rensole says:

“Oh, yeah, but that’s actually easy to explain. The thing is, uhm, and I’m not comparing this situation to war let me first say that out of the gate, but the thing is I do have family which have served overseas and unfortunately seen action. One of the things that you often see in PTSD, uhm, related problems, or soldiers who have served abroad, at night when you’re stationed you don’t have night vision you don’t have anything to look at, every shadow every tree every bush looks like an enemy combatant, and you’re always afraid of the things you can’t see, that’s just human nature. So right now everybody is automatically on edge because we told ‘em like, hey guys look there are gonna be people who’re trying to put you off your game. Aaand now, everybody who speaks against the narrative of the group is automatically a shill, or a bot, or bought in some way. So, it’s kind of a natural response but people do need to detach themselves emotionally because a lot of people are too emotionally invested, and that’s when you get scenarios like this.”

There’s a lot to unpack here.

Let’s start by going through his basic analogy step by step. First, rensole opens with a bit about his history, setting up the analogy, as well as making it harder to criticise by humanising it. Next, he introduces it, but is very ambiguous about what he’s actually referencing. He says “PTSD related problems”, “soldiers who have served abroad”, and “at night when you’re stationed you don’t have night vision you don’t have anything to look at”. Given the topic, he seems to be lumping these all together into a ‘PTSD vibes’ package, which corresponds to the mindset people had to wrongly consider Josh suspect, but also by necessary extension, the mindset people have when suspicious of anyone being an undercover. Additionally, using this gives the impression we are in a stage of post-trauma, when in fact our war is still ongoing.

He then reveals the first premise of his argument: that for people in this mindset, “every shadow every tree every bush looks like an enemy combatant”. He provides reasoning for this – “you’re always afraid of the things you can’t see, that’s just human nature.” This word is critical. Until this point, he had not specifically said what he assumes motivated people to wrongly suspect Josh, but now he’s retroactively slipping in the assumption it was fear. In other words, he assumes the primary constitutive component of the ‘PTSD vibes’ mindset is fear. It may be true that fear can be a motivator for people to be suspicious, but I do not think it is the primary one, and certainly not the only one: vigilance, for example. Essentially, he is painting ‘being suspicious someone may be an undercover’ as caused by fear, which is generally seen as a bad and irrational emotion.

Next, he says everyone is “on edge” (ambiguously interpretable as fear, or any other motivator for having suspicions) because we’ve been told there are people trying to ‘put us off’, directly aligning fear of those people (for example, a large institution that could potentially run an undercover operation) with the fear of shadows, trees, and bushes from before.

In the following sentence, he refers to “everybody who speaks against the narrative of the group”, but this does not logically follow; he has not been discussing group-think, or people being criticised just for speaking out against the established narrative. This is an unrelated tangent, and is not part of the main argument. Without this tangent, his logical argument finishes: “now, everybody is automatically a shill, or a bot, or bought in some way.” This is clearly too absolute, and draws attention to how his conflation of ‘fear (and other motivators) that people may be undercovers’ with ‘PTSD vibes’ leads to the silly conclusion that ‘now everyone sees everyone else as a suspect’. Adding just a few unrelated words about group-think confuses his language and acts as an effective diversion, while still creating the right ‘received feeling’ for the audience he wants. Finally, in the last sentence rensole sums up by saying that despite it feeling “natural” to suspect people of not being who they say they are, this is actually just being “too emotionally invested”, and we shouldn’t do that.

If we reduce rensole’s intended analogy and argument to it’s logical form:

Assumption: fear is the motivation for people to suspect others, including Josh

Analogy: the ‘PTSD vibes’ mindset is caused by this fear

1. When people have ‘PTSD vibes’, they see enemies everywhere

2. Everyone here has ‘PTSD vibes’

3. Therefore, everyone is seeing enemies in people who speak against the group narrative everywhere

Solution: Don’t consider if people are sus, or else you might think everyone is

This is clearly bullshit, which makes rensole’s diatribe merely flowery bullshit.

So why did he make us this word salad? It seems, taking his passage as a whole, the purpose may have been to associate being ‘especially vigilant of potential undercovers’ with being fearful, and to then show we shouldn’t be fearful, thus giving the audience the impression we shouldn’t be especially vigilant of potential undercovers. In my opinion, the passage reads like a deception 101, and is a very clear indicator we have strong reason to suspect rensole.

At 2:09:19, in response to a question about exit strategy, rensole says “Uhmm, honestly once it hits, pfft I don’t know, 2k I’ll probably sell one, maybe two, after that it’s catching a falling knife.” To start, “catching a falling knife” implies it will drop very suddenly, which is simply not true because of trading halts every few minutes. Next, if we first assume rensole is who he says he is, we get the following dialectical transformation:

(rensole is legit → rensole understands the GME situation) → rensole starts selling at 2k

Unfortunately, the synthesis doesn’t really follow from this thesis and antithesis. Surly by this point, rensole would understand that $2,000 is very low in comparison to the potential, and that people starting to sell here will only harm the end result?

Alright, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and continue assuming he’s legit. We already know rensole is aware of his position as an emerging leader, and that he understands price anchoring because he’s explained it in prior posts (for example, this one from literally the day before), but if we look at this second dialectical transformation:

(rensole is aware of his influence → rensole is aware of price anchoring) → rensole says he’ll start selling at 2k anyway

The synthesis still does not follow from this thesis and antithesis. Therefore, we can identify this as a simple behavioural anomaly: why would rensole say he’s selling at a much lower than expected value if he is legit, recognises his position of influence, and understands price anchoring? If he’s an undercover, this obviously makes a lot more sense…

Towards the end of his appearance, at 2:26:24, rensole says “And, f-for the guy that just said in this chat ‘I think this isn’t the same rensole as on GME’, I am – Hah…”

*music stops*

I’m sorry, what?

A lot of people said a lot of shit in the chat, it seems weird this specifically would be THE ONLY TIME IN THE ENTIRE SHOW YOU REFERENCE IT!

When I heard this, I genuinely did a real life double-take! Seriously this is sub-amateur shit, I wouldn’t expect to hear this sort of god-tier fuck up from even a bad con-artist!

For the smooth-brains: If you’re legit, you’re not thinking about trying to look legit, so you don’t bother being defensive about it, especially when it’s a tiny comment hardly anyone even saw. The fact he went to the effort of calling it out shows it mattered to him, and implies he’s just fucking lying, really. It’s even possible to hear him stutter on the word ‘for’, where he considers – just for a moment – that maybe, maybe it’s not the best idea to draw attention to that fact people reckon you’re sus by calling out some randomer in the chat... BUT THEN HE DOES IT ANYWAY!

For real why the fuck did I go to the effort of making such a massive post if he’s just gonna go around telling people “I-I am a real person btw, aha.”

Folks, this is no ordinary bruh moment, this is an epic bruh moment!

An analogy just because it’s funny: Imagine you’re sitting around watching TV with a friend who has small hands, and the show makes a crappy joke about how people with small hands have small penises. Out of fucking nowhere, completely unprompted, your friend turns to you and, with the most sincere dead-pan expression, says: “I-I have a big dick btw, aha.”

Yeah… Ok buddy.

I’ve got another one: You’re in a room full of activists all chatting to each other. One person says John, who’s on the other side of the room, might be sus. John’s ears prick up, and he immediately leaves the conversation he’s in to come over and say “I-I’m not an undercover cop btw, aha”, then turns around and walks back.

This has never happened because it’s fucking stupid.

Not that there’s any need, but we can plug this into a dialectical transformation giving him the benefit of the ‘doubt’:

(rensole is legit → rensole doesn’t need to try looking legit because he’s already totally legit) → rensole calls out d0nkeyd1ck69 or whoever the fuck in the chat for saying he might not be legit

Hmm, doesn’t seem to follow guys! Ah gee, I wonder which part of the thesis is wrong? ?

I genuinely can’t stop laughing about this shit, it’s actually hilarious! Seriously this is embarrassing bro, get some rest. I’d only ever seen two brief instances of undercovers accidentally breaking character up until finding this, and holy fuck this one is definitely the funniest!

This is so bad, it’s almost an admission…

After he says the line, rensole falls silent for a couple of minutes, and then Andrew unexpectedly cuts the stream (bit sus tbh). Rensole makes his second appearance on AndrewMoMoney’s show the next day. I think the team had a meeting after the actors’ monumental fuck up on the last one, as this time he seems to be in damage-control mode. Rensole compensates for some of the things I highlighted from the first show, including being a bit more clear about the character’s history, giving marginally higher price targets (still only “many thousands”), and being slightly less overt in his anti-anti-FUD. I won’t bother analysing it in full because it’s fairly boring, this post is getting rather long, and frankly I’ve already seen enough.

I conclude this investigation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-15VC4Yxzys

^{(yeah am aware of the irony of using a cop meme to dunk on an undercover but is funny af so})