What Is Hazard Insurance for Homeowners? | Allstate

I was invited by one of the mods to share this here as a mega thread, so here goes...
Edit - apparently this saga was so long that I had to split it into two parts. This is part 1-4.
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Well, apparently I need to put this in here. I do not give consent for my posts to be read/interpreted/posted to any monetized or ad-supported platform. Examples include YouTube or other platforms. Short version: If you make money off reading someone else's posts, I do not give consent for you to make money off of my posts.
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PART 1:
After years of hearing stories of problems with HOA's (and having no tolerance for busybodies ourselves) my wife and I were both solidly in agreement that we would never purchase a home in an HOA.
When we finally did find a house and purchased it, we knew for a fact that we were NOT in an HOA. However, just behind us, we learned there was a (not really) HOA.
About a week after we moved in, there was a knock on the door. One of the neighbors behind us, announcing that she was President of the HOA, and welcoming us to the neighborhood. Seems civil enough, but we asked, "what HOA".
"Oh, we're behind you, the home behind yours is where the HOA starts."
"Ok, that's nice, nice to meet you..." Just general pleasantries.
We were hopeful. We were shocked, even. Someone associated with the management of an HOA that wasn't a complete busybody psychopath!
How wrong we were.
The way our lot was, there was a sliver of green space between our property line and the sidewalk, in a somewhat triangular shape (the street ran west southwest, our property line ran due east-west). So there was a wedge of land there. We'd always been told that this belonged to the HOA, yadda yadda - no big deal, just meant we didn't have to deal with the upkeep of this land.
Now that this set up is all in place, it's time to start the story of how we got the (not really an) HOA dissolved.
We had a couple of trees in our yard. Literally on the property line, so we took responsibility for taking care of these things. They're *MASSIVE*. They're also a pain in the butt, incredibly dense/heavy, and because of the way the limbs grow, they're prone to splitting and dropping limbs. There was a huge limb that extended way out into the street adjacent to the green space owned by the HOA. This thing was a major risk of dropping and severely injuring/killing someone. We didn't want that on our conscience (or our insurance!) and so we decided to take that limb down entirely, as well as clean out a lot of the deadwood in the two trees. Hired an arborist, they came out, did their thing. $1400 later, we were left with some decent sized rounds that we were going to move over the next weekend (I was out of town the first weekend after we removed the limb). I should not that the wood was neatly stacked in the green space on the barkdust, out of everyone's way, and in no way a hazard or eyesore.
Enter the shrieking harpy...er.. .President of the "HOA". My wife had stepped out the door the day I had left on my trip and she pulls up into our driveway, rolls down the window, and starts yelling at my wife:
"YOU NEED TO MOVE THAT WOOD NOW!!!!! THAT'S PRIVATE PROPERTY OF THE HOA!!! MOVE IT NOW!!!!"
My wife is *not* a confrontational type. She's also somewhat petite, and tried to explain to the harpy that I was out of town and that we would be moving it as soon as I got back in town the next weekend.
Nope, not good enough. She shrieks at my wife some more, and my wife ends up grabbing the wheelbarrow and somehow moves this stack of rounds (some of them weighed close to 100 lbs) around the fence, up our driveway, and into the backyard. She was pissed.
So was I. We knew where the harpy lived, so when I got back I went over to talk to her, and explain that I was rather displeased in how she treated my wife. Didn't pound on the door, wasn't aggressive or anything.
They wouldn't answer the door. Cowards (we knew they were home).
This left us with a bit of a displeased taste in our mouth. The next spring, the hedge that is planted outside of our fenceline, well, it wasn't maintained very well, and pushed over two sections of our wooden fence. So I emailed the harpy and explained that their hedge had damaged our fence.
"It's not our hedge!"
"um... it's growing in your green space"
"That's not our green space!"
Waitwut?
"Then why the [censored] did you decide to screech at my wife last summer when we had the wood stacked there
Silence.
Well, at that point I fixed the fence so our dog wouldn't escape, after pruning the laurel back sufficiently that it wouldn't damage the fence again. And started making some phone calls. I contacted the county, and ended up speaking to about seven different departments in order to figure out who actually owned that strip of land. After probably two weeks of trying to find the right people to talk to, I got to the roads division. The green space was marked as part of the right of way for the road, and therefore no one actually "owned" that space.
"So I can chop down that ugly overgrown hedge that's encroaching on the sidewalk and knocking down my fence?"
"Yep," says the kind gentleman from the roads division.
"As an aside," he asked, "you mentioned something about there being an HOA associated with the plots to the east of your property?"
"Yeah?"
"well, part of what took me so long to get an answer for you is that it turns out there is no HOA registered with the county there, so we were looking in the wrong place entirely......"
"Wait, there's no HOA there?"
"No, hasn't ever been one since that subdivision was built..."
"Huh.... Interesting...."
And a plot was hatched.
We had befriended a couple of people within the neighborhood behind us, and they were rather fed up with Ms. "President of the HOA" and her antics. She was the typical busybody, bullying anyone she didn't like, and apparently for the last 10 years or so had been collecting HOA "dues" from everyone in the neighborhood to the tune of $300/year. There were 36 homes in the "HOA". Right around $100,000 in dues. For a non-existent HOA. With no real maintenance. Oh, they hosted an annual block party - potluck style.... They pulled weeds from the green space - on a volunteer basis.
So I did what any red-blooded American would do. I got 36 envelopes. 36 stamps. And printed off 36 copies of a letter with my findings from the county that there was not now, nor ever had been for the recorded history of the subdivision, any HOA, neighborhood association, or any similar organization. And that they, collectively, had paid in excess of $100,000 in dues over that time to a non-existent entity, plus any fines the non-existent HOA had decided to levy.
The neighbors, in turn, did exactly what any red-blooded American would do.
They sued the hell out of her for every penny they'd paid over the last 10 years.
Won, too.
And there's no longer an "HOA" behind us.
EDIT: Forgot to mention this. In all the digging into this mess, we learned she's a real estate agent. I figure I'll wait until she pisses me off again and report this whole mess to the state's real estate licensing board. *evil grin*\
Edit to the edit: as others have pointed out, this needs to be reported to the licensing board. Will look into that process....
Edit of the edit to the edit: I have sent an initial e-mail to my state's Real Estate licensing board (Real Estate Agency), and will post any updates as things develop. I did look her up in the licensing system, apparently she's licensed as a principal broker for her agency. This should get interesting.
Edit the fourth: And this should be interesting - her license is up for renewal at the end of this month. This should put one hell of a speed bump in that process. *evil grin*
Regarding the criminal charges, since I wasn't a victim of the fraud, that's not something I can pursue. However, I spoke w/ my friend who was one of her victims and he and his wife are talking to other people they trust about coming together and seeking criminal charges.
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PART 2:
Today, my wife and I had dinner with our friends who were among the victims of this psycho. And I learned a lot. Probably definitely more than I should have. I learned a lot about the lawsuit that was filed when I sent out the letters revealing that there was no HOA. There was, in fact, a settlement to make the lawsuit go away. I will say this, the Harpy got a good lawyer. A *really* good lawyer. One of the terms of the settlement was that the total amount remain undisclosed, but our friends confirmed that they were made whole. Another part of the settlement was a pretty stringent non-disclosure agreement.
I'm gonna have to start pretty far back in this mess, because it explains a lot about how this all went down. The subdivision that Harpy lives in was built back in 2000. And it turns out that at the time the subdivision was built, she was the first one to buy in this brand new neighborhood. The developer had actually planned to set up an HOA (the correct way) but because of delays in construction and selling the homes, they never actually set it up. [Based on one of the comments below and a glance at the relevant state law, this is apparently bad information that was passed on to me.] That didn't stop Ms. Harpy though, not at all. So as soon as the next owners moved in, she reached out to them. "Hi, welcome to the neighborhood. We are setting up a neighborhood association, a voluntary HOA if you will. That way we can take care of the common areas, and keep property values up." The usual excuses behind an HOA.
Well, after the first 5-6 houses were bought and the owners moved in, and agreed to this voluntary "HOA", well... The pitch changed. It went from a "neighborhood association" to just a straight, "Hey, welcome to the neighborhood. I'm the president of the HOA, nice to meet you!" Most people went along with it. They figured they had missed something in the disclosures, or in the listing, or something. But this was a brand spanking new subdivision. And at the time, you couldn't find a brand new subdivision that *didn't* have an HOA. There were a few people that *did* in fact pay attention. When called on it, she would change her pitch back to the "Well, it's not *really* an HOA.... It's more a voluntary neighborhood association... But we do have some rules we've all agreed to (that it turns out she wrote all on her own), and we do collect a small amount of money, just $25 a month, that's not unreasonable, is it? Just to keep up the common areas, and the rules help keep everyone's property values up!"
All of that came to light during the depositions and testimony in this lawsuit.
And she sold them on it. Everyone signed the "rules" (She even called them CC&R's - with the argument that this gave them a certain legal weight to be able to enforce the rules), either under the guise of the "HOA", or the "Neighborhood Association". By the time all the properties were initially sold, it was roughly 2:1, those that thought it was an HOA, and those that thought it was just a voluntary association. And as people sold, and new owners moved in, well, the HOA pitch just got easier to sell. To the point that at the time of the lawsuit, it was somewhere between 3:1 and 4:1.
As testimony was wrapping up, her attorney put forward a proposed settlement. I was able to find out from my neighbor that in this proposed settlement the only people that would be, in the legal jargon, "made whole" were the ones that signed on under the impression that it was a legitimate HOA. Her attorney successfully argued to the judge that the people who signed up under the "voluntary neighborhood association" were not actually defrauded, and therefore couldn't be a part of the settlement. That *really* pissed off those people.
Because of the timing of the whole house of cards tumbling down around her, she had sufficient equity in her house that she was able to refinance her mortgage and pay the settlement amount. So she had to pay a lot of people back out of her own pocket, losing that equity that she had built up over the last ten years. I'm guessing that her husband was *not* in on the scam, as he was not one of the named parties in the suit, and he filed for divorce in the middle of the lawsuit. As for how he didn't know? No clue. Maybe she just had him convinced that her commissions from real estate sales were just that good. I have no idea what the terms of the divorce were, but it was apparently rather acrimonious. Our friends more than once heard shouting matches from the Harpy's house as they were out walking the neighborhood.
So hopefully that clarifies how she was able to sucker people in. Our friends were some of those that were convinced that it was a legitimate HOA, and they told us that she was so smooth, so convincing, that they didn't doubt it for a minute. At least that meant that they were "made whole" even though they couldn't legally disclose how much they got back.
Now, for more recent happenings. One of the things we talked about tonight was our neighbors going to the district attorney and pursuing criminal charges. Well, they talked to the DA's office this morning, and apparently the statute of limitations has passed. For a crime like this, even though it would be a felony level charge, the statute of limitations is only 3 years for that type of crime. BUT I passed on to them the idea of reporting her to the IRS. Since they were among those who lost money, I figure it's only fair that they get the reward if there is one. They both got a rather gleeful look at that idea. So yeah, that should be interesting.
One of the reasons that I said the Harpy got a good lawyer was that one of the terms of the non-disclosure agreement was that if they signed on to the settlement, they agreed not to report her to any professional board or any licensing agency. So she obviously had concerns that something like this might possibly, just maybe, perhaps have an impact on her license as a real estate agent.
Too bad for her that I wasn't part of that settlement. Because after my initial email to the state Real Estate Agency, I got a response back this morning, and after a couple of more e-mails back and forth, I was interviewed over the phone by the head of the professional standards division. They appeared to be *very* interested to hear what I had to say. I gave a recorded statement on the grounds that it would remain confidential (don't want her trying to make my life a living hell). And at dinner tonight, I learned that our friends have a pretty good friendship with several of the people that were *NOT* paid off in the settlement agreement, since they signed up under the "voluntary neighborhood association". The ones her lawyer insisted were not defrauded and therefore couldn't be part of the settlement. Which means they also are not covered under that pesky little non-disclosure agreement.
Before I started writing this update, I e-mailed the names and contact information for three of those owners who still live in the neighborhood to the head of the professional standards division. Because while I had to deal with her craziness and general pain-in-the-assitude, I didn't actually lose any money. But actual victims of her scam? I imagine their testimony will carry quite a bit more weight with professional standards. I also (solely for their convenience) included the state court case number for the lawsuit. Who knows, maybe they can see the records of the lawsuit and the terms of the settlement since they are a state agency.
That, kind Redditors, brings us up to today. If I hear more updates (which hopefully I will through my friends) I will gladly share them here, and I'll happily answer any questions I can.
PART 3:
And now, for Part 3 ladies and gentlemen, a couple of new characters have been introduced. Government agencies have gotten involved.
My friend and neighbor texted me this afternoon, saying only, "CALL ME!!!"
As soon as I was able to, I gave him a call. And he could barely stop chuckling.
He caught me up a bit. After we'd talked the other evening, he'd started talking to some of the people in the neighborhood. And it turns out that Ms. Harpy of the Not-Really-an-HOA is apparently kind of a slow learner. Because in the last couple-three years, while she hasn't tried to bilk anyone else out of their money, some of the newer owners in the neighborhood were being told that there was still a "neighborhood association" and she kept trying to enforce arbitrary rules on people. Except everyone had heard about her antics. And promptly told her to get bent. So if anything, her nonsense has actually created a more cohesive neighborhood. Everyone is united in hating her! :D
But that's not the reason he was chuckling. He was chuckling because he'd just gotten off the phone with an IRS agent. Now normally, that's not your expected reaction when speaking to anyone from the government with the word "Agent" attached to their title in any way. But no. He was chuckling after he spent over an hour on the phone detailing everything he knew about her dealings as "president of the HOA". As well as providing contact info for quite a few others in the neighborhood who knew what had happened over the years. I *really* hope I get to hear more about what happens with the IRS.
As if that wasn't enough good news, I popped over to the state real estate licensing board website (I've been checking it every day since I spoke to the head of professional standards) and saw this:
https://i.imgur.com/4zpahUU.jpg
Sorry I had to redact the hell out of that, but I really want to try to keep this entertaining for you all here while maintaining anonymity.
If I may direct your attention to the section titled "License Information" the column titled "Status"
Additionally, if I may direct your attention to the "Disciplinary Action" section, specifically the columns titled "Resolution" and "Found Issues".
From a little cursory reading of state law and associated regulations, this decision is temporary until the full investigation is completed. Once that happens, the professional standards board will decide if there is to be permanent action against her license. If there is, then there will be a date in the "order signed date" column, and a *really* entertaining link in the "documents" column in the disciplinary action section that lays out the entire case, from start to finish. (I've read a couple of documents in other cases I found where there was a final order - and wow, they lay *EVERYTHING* out).
So there we have it Reddit. I was almost kinda feeling bad for bringing up stuff from years ago to government agencies, but the fact that she is *still* trying to pull off this crap (albeit without the money part) made any of that evaporate like the HOA she thought she had. So it may be the end, or it may not, but at least for now, we've reached the conclusion of the saga of the Harpy of the Not-Really-an-HOA.
PART 4
For those who have read my scribbling on here regarding the Harpy of the Not-Really-An-HOA, hopefully you have enjoyed the saga so far. I am adding this last post on here as a place to put the aftermath of this saga and any updates that I may hear. Because unbelievably, this is a crazy situation that just keeps on giving.
When last we left Ms. Harpy, she was being investigated by the state Real Estate Licensing board, as well as the IRS.
Well, I learned something interesting in this whole saga. Apparently, while the statute for limitations for criminal tax evasion is only three years (or possibly 6 years, depending on the situation), there is apparently no statute of limitations on how far back they can go in civil court. So while she may dodge any federal charges of tax evasion, the IRS will be crawling up in her business however the heck far they want. I suspect that will end.. poorly (and expensively) for her.
Additionally, the state department of revenue has also caught wind of this. Can't imagine how that may have happened. Similar to the feds, while they can't charge her criminally on the tax evasion, I'm sure they also will be digging through all of her tax records for the last, oh, FOREVER.....
I've already had an interview with a rather pleasant IRS agent, and was able to go through everything that I knew, the timeline for what happened, and how it was that I discovered there was not an actual HOA there. When I explained how this all started because she decided to be a bitch about a couple of relatively small issues, and it has since snowballed into, well, THIS, she (the agent) laughed so hard it took us several minutes to get back on track. And she continued to chuckle and giggle throughout the rest of the interview.
And the state department of revenue has contacted me as well, wanting to set up a time for an in person meeting. So that will be fun. :)
I've considered going to the local news media about this as some suggested, but decided against it for a couple of reasons. The story isn't really as fresh as it was 7 or so years ago when it was all going down, and I doubt the news medias ability to keep my name out of it... Maybe not on the air, but somehow it would slip. And that would add needless complication to my life. If somehow she avoids getting her real estate license revoked, maybe that will change the equation enough to where it might be worth letting the media know. Plus it gives them a recent hook to tie the story into. "State Real Estate board refuses to revoke license of crooked agent! News at 11!". You get the gist.
I don't have the screenshot of it, but on the state licensing board website, there's three new items in the "Disciplinary action" section of her license. An additional proposed suspension sanction, and two proposed revocation sanctions. I'm guessing the second proposed suspension is so she can't default back to a "regular" real estate agent. And the proposed revocation sanctions are for her Principal Broker and regular Real Estate agent licenses as well. So that will be interesting to see what happens once it's finalized. I imagine that process will not be quick. Once I get home tonight and have a chance to redact the relevant information from the screenshot, I'll post that as well.
I've heard through my friend who lives in the subdivision that there have been several people contacted by the state Real Estate board, as well as the state department of revenue and the IRS to set up interviews (and some have already been completed).
And just out of curiosity, I checked the website for the local branch of the national real estate company she works for. And lo and behold, she's no longer listed on there as either the principal broker or an agent, and someone else is listed as principal broker. I'm going to take this development as a cautious agency making sure they don't get caught up in any legal messes. But I think someone just learned the lesson, "you are merely a cog in this machine. you are easily replaced."
In a final bit of entertainment for this saga, I was shown several screenshots by my friend of a post in the subdivision's Facebook page that was quite, well, I guess entertaining would be a great word. She's since deleted the post, but essentially she was on there shrieking about how they were "all" under a non-disclosure agreement, and she was apparently threatening to sue any of them that talked to anyone for violation of the NDA. This was met by cricket chirps from anyone who knew what was going on, but there were several "what the hell is she talking about" type of posts by a few of the newer owners who weren't in the know. But my favorite response was by someone who apparently is an attorney (based on how they phrased things) who wasn't here when the not-an-HOA was in effect (she's only lived in the neighborhood for about a year) but apparently caught a quick heads up from somebody. The short version of her post was that while she wasn't aware of the particulars of what was going on, she stated that NDA's don't cover someone answering questions from a regulatory or investigatory agency, either state or federal, as well as not covering any testimony being given under oath. And trying to bully someone into not speaking to such an agency by means of an NDA or otherwise might even be considered witness tampering or intimidation. And a few hours later the Harpy's post (and all the associated replies) mysteriously disappeared... But you know, FB will gladly hand over the whole conversation with a subpoena. And the IRS does not mess around with the possibility of witness tampering. So maybe she might end up facing criminal charges after all. Depends on how stupid she gets, I guess. If past performance is any kind of indicator, she may very well get to spend some time in the gray bar hotel.
And as any more updates come in, I'll add them on as edits to this post so there's one convenient place to watch for updates.
MAJOR UPDATE!!! See the attached photo. The state Real Estate Agency has finalized their orders on her license. Folks, I wish I could share the text of the final orders associated with this action. But because it is public record, it is also searchable, and would all too easily reveal her identity and open the doors to headaches for me and my family. So I'll summarize. The first revocation for Fraud or Dishonest Conduct and Failure to Disclose is of her Principal Broker license. The second revocation, for Incompetence or Untrustworthiness and Records, that's for her regular real estate agent license. There are some bombshells in the final orders. Apparently, as a few people suspected in the comments, there was a lot more happening than just what was happening in her neighborhood. I was shocked at how quickly the final order was released (from what I was seeing in other cases of revocations, the investigation usually lasts anywhere from three to six months). But reading the final orders, the Principal Broker revocation was based mostly on the information in the lawsuit that was filed by the neighbors back in 2012 and the ensuing settlement. However, their investigation apparently turned up quite a bit of other STUFF. Including lying to clients, falsifying records, not disclosing relationship between herself and sellers or buyers, and other instances of outright fraud. I will quote one line nearly verbatim from both final orders... Because it's just so delicious to read:
"While this Board has taken the strongest action granted by the [APPLICABLE STATE STATUTES], much of the information that was discovered during the course of this Board's investigation is beyond the purview of this Board. Therefore we are turning over all records and witness testimony to the [REDACTED] County District Attorney and the [STATE REDACTED] Department of Justice, Criminal Justice Division for further action."
https://imgur.com/qDKNVTg
ANOTHER UPDATE!: Folks the world of legal hurt his woman has brought onto herself just continues to avalanche. This morning, I had walked my daughter to her school bus stop (right on the corner where the not-an-HOA starts) and a unmarked SUV with government plates comes around the corner. Picture every unmarked law enforcement SUV you've seen in a movie. That stereotypical. And they park a couple of doors down from the Harpy's house. I risked being a couple minutes late to work to watch what was about to unfold. And was not in the least bit disappointed. Because out of the vehicle step two individuals wearing dark blue jackets with bright yellow letters. Some very specific letters. BIG letters that may or may not have spelled out "IRS" and underneath in smaller letters the words "Special Agent".
I may have giggled when I got to my truck. I may have laughed uproariously on my drive in to work. Because the first thing I did was look up just how big of a poop-pile she may have landed in. Apparently, a really deep one. Because from what I could find, the only people authorized to wear the "Special Agent" jacket are in the IRS's Criminal Investigation Division.
I texted my friend who lived in the neighborhood this as I was leaving for work around 7:15 this morning.He texted me back around 10ish.... He's been watching all of this unfold out his front window since I texted him. In addition to the original SUV (which is now right in front of her house) there's another SUV there as well. Apparently some other people wearing IRS jackets (just without the "Special Agent") got out of the second SUV, and he just saw them carrying out some "banker's boxes" sealed with red tape, and a couple of computers. And because this poo-pile is not yet deep enough, apparently they were checking something (assuming VIN) on the Mercedes SUV she started driving a few months ago.
I'll update this as he sends me more info. We're seeing the undoing of the Harpy in nearly real-time.... Oh, how sweet it is.
The second post (parts 5-8) can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/NuclearRevenge/comments/kst2vl/how_i_got_a_not_really_an_hoa_disbanded_and/

I've taught college-level investments classes, and I think a lot of you people would benefit from some of what we talk about in there.
It's important for you to understand what exactly risk is, in the finance sense. Watch this video and think about how you would react in this scenario. The expected value (average value of all possible outcomes) of the case is $500,000.50. I have a feeling that if you sold that case on the market you'd find a market price below that; the difference between the expected value and the market price (assuming a fully liquid market) is the risk premium
A central concept of finance and investments is this: the more risk you take, the more return you get. The safest thing you can do is convert your holdings to cash and stick it in your wallet, but you would get zero return (and lose purchasing power due to inflation over time). Technically, sticking money in a savings account is riskier, though interest rates on savings deposits is essentially zero these days and deposit insurance removes most of that risk. Any market play that gets you massive returns is putting a bunch of capital at risk (think about that WSB guy who put $700,000 into GME options; imagine what happens to the guy if the price doesn’t move). The reason the most common investment advice is to fire everything into low-cost index funds is because it’s low risk and low cost (active management of mutual funds rarely justifies the extra cost, but that’s a different discussion entirely). If you’re undertaking extra risk, you theoretically should be getting extra return to justify that risk. Think about a lottery ticket. If the jackpot is high enough, the expected value (the averaged return you get from all possible outcomes) of a lottery ticket is higher than the price you pay for it. However, given the limited set of outcomes that a lottery ticket gives you and the likelihood of the worst case scenario (you lose your entire investment), the risk is too high for most people to seriously invest in (and if you do “seriously” invest in the Powerball, you’re probably not having a good time).
Another important consideration is liquidity. If you're selling a Stradivarius violin, you're going to have to spend a lot of time searching for a buyer who will pay full price OR you’ll have to sell it for less than it’s worth. In the market, this tends to be reflected in the bid/ask spread. We like to think about the market as a monolith, but in reality it’s just an aggregation of all the investors out there. That means liquidity isn’t a problem when it comes to most stocks on the NYSE and NASDAQ (eg. At the time of this writing the bid/ask spread on AAPL was $.01 for a price of $136.79), but when you head to OTC territory you might start seeing bid/ask spreads that can be up to 10% of the price for some of those real “no man’s land” stocks. That means that the price you pay (the ask price) and the price you can sell at (the bid price) can be wildly different. That also means that any “at current market price” order you send (especially in pre-market) may be filled at a price different than the price you think it’s going to be filled at.
A third concept to think about is market efficiency. The central idea of market efficiency is that the price reflects all available information (different forms of efficiency consider private/public/historical info). A truly efficient market will react instantaneously and accurately to any new information that is created/released, eg. A firm releases earnings and beats expectations, therefore the price jumps up.
If market efficiency is a product of investors discovering information and acting on it, that means your best opportunities are in places that are less visible to the aggregate investing public. That’s where pennystocks comes in. Do a search on most of the tickers listed here, and you’ll see a bunch of summary stock profiles and not much else. Do a search for any S&P 500 company and you’ll find an incredible amount of news, branding, and other information. If you’re looking for “good” penny stocks to buy up, you’re looking for an information advantage over the “average” investor. However, there is the hazard (that’s been around long before the internet) of bad or fake information.
Remember that the market is an aggregate of all the investors out there, and those investors are subject to psychological biases, differences in personal attitude, and individual risk tolerance. That’s why you see some interesting reactions to events: remember when TSLA stock dropped because Elon Musk was smoking marijuana? There’s nothing about the CEO smoking marijuana that should change the fundamental value of the company, but investors collectively seemed to think this was a negative for the long term prospects of TSLA.
A few common investor biases:
• Losses are treated as more impactful than a gain. Think about if you buy into a stock and it immediately drops $.10. Compare this to how you react if you buy in and it immediately jumps $.10; the average investor is going to react more strongly to the former.
• We all hate having made a “loser” trade. The effect is usually that investors hold on too long to a poorly performing stock in hopes that it will rebound.
• Investors tend to anchor their perception of a stock’s performance based on their entry price. A $.10 drop in price hits worse if it takes you below your purchase price
• Playing with “house money” (ie. your gains) is treated differently than your initial principal. In practice, this means that an investor that has done well recently is more risk-tolerant (and not always in a good way)
• Investors are susceptible to "herding" behavior, where they follow what someone else is doing not because they know what that someone else is doing is good, but because they think that someone else knows something they don't.
Stock prices are subject to the principles of supply and demand, ie. increased demand will raise the price, and people looking to sell more than buy will lower the price. This is especially important when it comes to momentum (the principle that an increasing stock price will continue to increase and a falling price will continue to fall). This is why you see overreactions to news items and a subsequent reversal; a news item creates a buying/selling frenzy that pushes the price until cooler heads walk in and say “maybe this price is wrong”. This is where swing traders try to profit: among other things, they look for stocks that have a drop that is unjustified in material info or in the degree of drop, buy up at “downward momentum” prices and sell after the reversal. Day traders also try to benefit by buying stocks with positive momentum and selling the second that momentum reverses.
So what does this mean for us at pennystocks? A few considerations that are unique for penny stocks:
1) I already mentioned it, but liquidity is a big consideration: Bid/ask spreads may be larger than normal and many brokers either don’t let you trade below $.01 or make you pay a fee to do so. This also means that options covering penny stocks are either sparse or nonexistent.
2) Information coverage: information can be hard to find, and sifting through good and bad info can be a chore
3) Low market participation: The smaller number of traders means that it takes fewer people to influence the price in a material way. This is what makes penny stocks susceptible to pump and dump schemes: A bad actor just needs to convince a (relatively) small number to buy in to a stock to bump up the price, then the dump can crater the price leaving a bunch of bag holders in their wake.
This also means that the price is subject to more psychological bias on the part of investors.
4) There are a lot of biotech firms in penny-stock land. The fortunes of these companies rest entirely on the outcomes of drug trials and/or acquisition by larger firms, which means you can see massive swings in price.
This scene from The Wolf of Wall Street should be required viewing for anyone wanting to jump headfirst into penny stocks. The modernization of trading means that commissions are drastically reduced, but the lessons here still apply. I’m not saying “don’t invest” because there are some mighty gains to be had if you do it right. I’m saying “be cautious” and certainly don’t trade on emotion. Understand that what we’re doing here is speculation, and that many stocks with penny prices are trading at penny prices for a reason. Increased volatility in the penny stocks market is going to make you feel a lot of things, but it’s important to compartmentalize this emotion and trade logically. The moment you start treating it, consciously or unconsciously, like a casino, you’ll get casino-like returns (spoiler alert, the house always wins in the end)
A few closing thoughts:
• Like another recently popular post here said, don’t be afraid to walk away for a few days to cool off.
• FOMO is the gains killer; there will always be a New Moon in terms of penny stocks.
• Pay attention to the sector you’re buying in and understand how that might influence the volatility of the stock’s price. Be especially wary of anyone trying to sell you on a “sure thing” biotech firm.
• MLFB to the moon! (Just kidding, don't rely on me to tell you what to buy) (EDIT: By Request 🚀🚀🚀)
And finally
• Do your own research! There are some legitimate DD threads on here, but you should do your own research and make sure they’re legit. Some threads here sound a lot like Jordan Belfort in the video above.
Further reading:
Wikipedia’s very long list of cognitive biases
Efficient markets hypothesis
Behavioral finance

are you worrying about your a level results? 👨‍🦯 are you convinced you’re not gonna do well? ❌ are you looking to distract yourself with a shitty rant from another student? 🥰 then this post is for you and me and all the Fs thats gonna be on our papers 😃🤚
backstory: im a j3 male and im in a mid-tier jc and my subject combi is HELK with H3 econs and well lets just say a levels was an ✨interesting✨ journey to hell so basically during a levels i decided to jot down my thoughts after each paper to get it out of my head and after the paper whenever someone asked how it went i would just send this stream fo consciousness type shit to my friends and recently ive been revisiting this and sent it to someone who told me my thoughts are funny and genuinely distract them from the impending doom of a levels 😳😳 sooooo yea just wanna hear everyones detailed a level thoughts as well and other stuff cos it helps to distract?? weirdly enough 😩🤚 soooo skip through this if u dont want to read a weird bunch of rambly thoughts
for privacy reasons, ive had to remove some stuff but it shld still make sense to some degree 😀😀😀😀😀
ANYWAYS HERE IT IS:
H2 KI Paper 1 (Difficulty: 6/10)
ok so section A essays cambridge really said fuck yall we’re gonna make both shit ❤️ like Q1 was so broad it literally went “what is knowledge” BITCH fmhdksjsk its like if a lit essay qn asked “What is the Great Gatsby about” KDJSJSJSN CHILE— but yea Q2 was qUiRkYyyY because cambridge 🤡 loves us 🥰🥰🥰🥰 ugh like how do u even talk about knowledge as a social construction 😭😭😭😭 anyways i was ✨forced✨ to do Q1 and like i just wrote that traditional JTB and JTB+G are not sufficient and maybe defining exactly what knowledge is is too difficult cos of criterion problem, so instead family resemblance + emphasis on virtue epistemology 👁👄👁 honestly i hope this answered the qn cos i feel like it does but im also not sure so 😔😔 but yea section B was SIGNIFICANTLY better at least but it genuinely felt like they gave up on setting the paper 🥰🥰 im kinda upset that history came out but it was the one question in section B that i didnt know how to do which is quite sad cos history is my strongest area in KI i think 🙄😃🤡 but yea so i had to do aesthetics and this one was more structured like i spent the first half talking about how it can give us aesthetic knowledge and the second half on moral knowledge (anticognitivism vs cognitivism) so i think honestly this was a pretty decent essay 😌💅 also i only broke down for 15 min during the paper so that actually didnt go too badly especially for my first a level paper 💀💀
H2 Literature Paper 1 (Difficulty: 8/10)
honestly the actual paper difficulty was a 7/10 BUT MCJDKJSKS FUCK I CANT BELIEVE i broke down in the morning of the paper 😭😭😭 which led to me being LATE AND I ARRIVED at 7.57, 3 MIN BEFORE THE EXAM STARTED 🤬👁👄👁 and ISTG it was the most frantic ive EVER BEEN LIKE straight up spilled water 😭😭 over my exam paper and the invigilator had to give me another one. but yea so i started the paper on time but still freaking out 😔 i did gatsby first and LET ME JUST SAY I WANTED TO DO THE ESSAY BUT I HAD TO DO THE PBQ and i was like 😳 SO YEA i think gatsby essay went decently??? like i wrote a LOT for gatsby like 5 pages BUT quality wise 💅 chile you know i aint have quality 😭😭🔫 but yea then PFT SO IT SEEMED FINE BUT THE PBQ was on relationship between fania and marianne and i was NOT USED to that shit and then the essay was on RULES like GIMME A BREAK 😭✋ but anyways i did the passage AND I ONLY REALISED 10 HOURS AFTER THE PAPER how stupid i was because I WROTE EVERY TECHNIQUE POSSIBLE BUT CHARACTER FOILS how did i not talk about fania as a foil to marianne and vice versa 🤢 I WANNA 🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫 yea like literally i said they had deteriorating friendship because of conflicting moral positions etc BUT CHILE HOW CJHDKSHKSB DID I NOT TALK ABOUT FOILS. 🥴🥴 YEA SO I BROKE DOWN and anyways had about an hour left to do the poems and i saw the first set of poems and went NOPE🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️ but then i saw the rain one and started doing it only to realise i didnt know how to answer it so i went BACK TO THE FIRST SET 💀💀💀 CHILE DJHDKSJKS I HAD 50 MIN LEFT AND LIKE YEA I SOMEWHAT FINISHED like i had two more sentences to write for the form paragraph BUT UDJKDJSKHS 🥴🥴🤡🤡🤡🤡 anyways overall looking back at it gatsby pbq will be the best, comparison will be meh AND PFT will prob 😃🔫😔😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 so yea also just a reminder my difficulty rating is more about how i found the paper so not an objective paper difficulty
H2 KI Paper 2 (Difficulty: 8.5/10)
welp guess its time for me to fuck off into the amazon forest and drown in the amazon basin 🤡🤡 what the fuck was that paper omg i wanna light the examiner on fire 😃 myself too 🥰🥰🥰 so i correctly predicted that maths would be the Long CT topic but CHILE— instead of testing u know stuff like platonism, logicism or like invention vs discovery debate u know the normal stuff ☺️☺️ they really said SIKE and puLLED A DAMN UNO REVERSE 😭😭😭😭 what the hell was that long CT even like it concluded that mathematical truth is a priori and that the arithmetic truth is not empirical in nature💀💀 LIKE what OWN KNOWLEDGE DO I BRING IN so anyways i likened the argument to mathematical realism and argued that it was largely with merit so i agreed mainly with the authors conclusion but 😳😳👁👄👁 i brought in platonism somehow, uhh refuted logicist project with russell’s paradox etc and said that math can be disconfirmed sometimes but still largely infallible so i honestly dk if what i wrote was relevant but 🔫🔫🔫 and then by the time i finished the long CT and was about to cry i had to move on to the 2 short passages WHICH a day before the exam i had to do additional research on logical fallacies because my teacher didnt ✨teach✨ so anyways i managed to use some of the fallacies i researched on surprisingly and the short ct passages were very obviously weak so it wasnt the worst to come up with points objecting to the conclusion my only worry is now its too absolute but i hope 😃😃😃 they take pity on me 🥺🥺 thank u seab yall can fuck yourself i hate yall more than myself now 😌😌 so u BEST BE READY IM HAUNTING YALL NEXT TIME IM IN LONDON 🤢🤢
H2 Literature Paper 3 (Difficulty: 8/10)
can someone kill me please i wanna die and im degrading myself just like ralph in that unseen extract 🥰🥰🥰 anyways why was lit so tough i hate it so much and whats worse is that everyone was talking about how easy or doable the paper was and i was like 👁👄👁 chile what steroids are they on 😭😭😭 anyways so first as usual i did comparison because 🤡 that takes the longest to complete so um instead of 1 hour i took 1 hour 35 min to finish it 💀💀💀 like ms im running out of time and the motivation to finish this shit 😭😭 so yea my points were horrendously bad like i had two main points for the certainty and doubt one. 1) the men doubting ophelia and susan’s sexual desires leads to them having self doubt breeding repression and mental deterioration 2) the doubt that they have about their position and role in the family (hamlet and muriel) so ummm 🥲🥲 👋say bye to my A, then i did regen WHICH FOR ONCE WAS A BLESSING BECAUSE IT WAS A SIMILAR QN TO SOMETHING WE DID BEFORE soooo i think that has a genuine chance to do quite ok so 🥰🥰 but then THE UNSEEN. GIRL. I LOVE POEMS BUT THAT LONG ASS CALL AND RESPONSE WAS NOT IT. 🤬🤬 so anyways i did ✨prose✨ and almost broke down because i had 50 min to analyse the unseen prose and to write an essay for that but yes i managed to squeeze out 3 weird sus points that honestly i dont even rmb because they were 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️ bad so cHILE FUCK THIS IM DONE. 👁👄👁 HELLO C FOR LIT NICE TO MEET YOU 🥲😭😭😭😭
H2 Economics Paper 1 (Difficulty: 9.5/10)
we have a lot to talk about so mam/sinon-binaries, yall better get your POPCORN OUT BECAUSE 🥲 FUCK WE ARE WATCHING A TRAGEDY IN 3 PARTS. SO LETS START. part 1 🥴 so the day before the paper i was breaking down and shit because of [my friend who killed themselves] 👁👄👁 and other related things and i couldnt function at all and i desperately tried to sleep but god said no❤️ boy you’re gonna get ✨insomnia✨ so yea i couldnt SLEEP THE DAY BEFORE AN ECONS PAPER which is like MY HIGHEST CHANCE TO GET AN A in any subject but 🥰🥰🥰🥰 gotta love fate so yea i didnt sleep tried to but ultimately couldnt so i went and got 2 cups of coffee AND I STILL FELT LIKE KILLING MYSELF AND DYING so the morning of the paper 🤡🤡 my dad had to DRAG😌😌😌 me out of my room and force me to take the paper 🥲🥲 so PART 2. 😩 I REACHED THE VENUE and guess what i still wanted to die and contemplated another hdb jump off but 👀👀👀 oops i didnt follow through because i wanted to at least sit for the paper and then decide to die afterwards 🙄🙄 but like yea i went into the room and when they announced 14 marks worth of CLT for csq which means its out of 46 and not 60 I WAS LIKE 🙄🙄🙄 FINALLY something good 🥰 but then when i checked the csq 1 IT WAS ENTIRELY ON FIRMS AND DECISIONS LIKE I SAW COLLUSION AND WENT ☺️ well looks like its time to fuck myself in the ass and die 🔫🔫💀💀💀 SO YEA. I DIDNT REALLY STUDY FOR FIRMS AND DECISIONS LIKE i looked at it for 5 min before the paper 😭😭😭 COS I WAS FOCUSED ON DEMAND AND SUPPLY AND MARKET FAILURE SO 👋 there goes my A for econs anyways yea girl WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT NOT ONLY DID THEY TEST FIRMS THEY TESTED IT IN SUCH A WEIRD WAY. the entire csq was so weird like i was trying to think of what to write and i couldnt. like HOW DO U DRAW A DIAGRAM FOR COLLUSION SUPPLY RESTRICTION AND CONSUMER SURPLUS 🤬🤬 and wtf was that measure competition level 🤡🤡🤡 cambridge really wanted to see us suffer huh 💀💀 so yea i tried to smoke my way through and I ENDED UP spending a whole ass 1 hour 45 min on the first CSQ and then i was obviously crying internally and had like an hour for the last CSQ so PART 3. ⚠️⚠️ guess what i was so stressed and wanted to die so badly i felt nauseous throughout like 🤢 and i rushed to the toilet but i didnt make it to the sunk in time so i PUKED ON THE FUCKING FLOOR IM SO SORRY UNCLE 😭😭 and i felt so bad so i waited for the uncle and like yea left with 50 MIN TO DO THE LAST CSQ WORTH 16 MARKS NOW which is not that bad but I WAS PANICKING 👁👄👁 and they literally tested so much of balance of payments THAT WAS LIKE NOT SUPER RELEVANT TO THE SYLLABUS 🔫🔫🔫 WHAT THE ✨FUCK✨ anyways yea i had to rush my 8 mark CSQ ANSWER and i ended up writing one pretty bad paragraph and evaluation so i’ll def lose some marks for lack of scope ☺️☺️☺️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️ BYE LEMME JUST HEAD OUT AND DIE 💀💀💀 WHY CANT I DIE IN PEACE MY LORDDDDNCKJDKSJBS cambridge really wanted to see me suffer when im already suffering this much 🥴🙄 yea so it was super bad and the teacher asked if i wanted special consideration etc so i tried applying 👁👄👁 but even with that i REALLY DONT THINK I’LL DO WELL LIKE LCJDKSJKSBSM i was smoking for half the paper and breaking down for the other half 😃😃🔫 so heres to my worst paper YET. AND there goes my hopes for an A in econs 👋😳
H2 Economics Paper 2 (Difficulty: 5/10)
WHY IS SEAB LIKE THIS they really made the CSQ near impossible but for the essays they showed mercy for once 😭😭 BLESS THE EXAMINER WHO SET THIS 🙏 but still i fucked up a little cos the market failure question was a little unusually phrased but i think it should still be ok?? like i talked about how market for oil, plastics and electricity based on fossil fuels resulted in overpollution and externalities that thus resulted in market failure 🥴🥴 but I MESSED UP and i said these markets were demerit goods 💀💀 instead of purely neg ext in production + imperfect info but anyways yea policies was q standard and the 2 macro questions i did were.... WELL lets just say i wrote 2 body paras for 4(b) which is kinda bad because it was literally 1 body para on material SOL increasing and 1 body para on non-material SOL both increasing and decreasing 🗿 BUT EVEN THENNFBDMSBMS ok anyways i feel like my evaluation for all the essays were pretty good so hopefully they pull my marks up but Q5 OMG kdhkdhsks i had like 40 min left for Q5 and like i literally rushed and i wrote like 2 FUCKING BODY PARAS for both (a) and (b) which is quite bad ngl but like the body para for (a) was really long so i hope it gets me some marks still but i forgot to consider the possibility of cost push inflation so i’m ✨deceased✨ anyways 5(b) was A FUCKING RUSH and i wanted to cry because my arm hurt and i couldnt even finish drawing my graph so after finishing 2 body paras with 3 min left i had to evaluate 🥴🥴 so i literally only had expansionary FP and supply side policies, and i didnt bring in exchange rate 😭😭 but the worst feeling is that all the questions were genuinely so standard and if i had prepared a little more i KNOW i wouldve done quite well and now i genuinely dont know if I can get an A because my answers feel subpar compared to everyone else 🥲
H2 History Paper 1 (Difficulty: 8.5/10)
BITCH WHAT THE FUCK WAS THE SBQ 😭😭😭 so i didnt even get enough sleep cos i was breaking down SO GUESS WHO WAS DEADASS TIRED AND WANTED TO DIE THROUGHOUT THE PAPER 💀💀 anyways when i saw THAT SBQ i wanted TO JUST LEAVE 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️ LIKE they TESTED ORIGINS AGAIN which i studied 10 min before the paper cos i was so sure korean wacmc would be tested BUT 🗿🥲🥲🥲 well... UN was even shittier because wtf was that like CLT WAS CANCELLED BUT IT LOWKEY??? wasnt??? even a CLT question like u could answer it just talking about the peacekeeping operations but 😃😃 cambridge said ✨suffer✨ and tested ICJ CNDHSKHSKSH LIKE OK. I SUSPECTED ICJ WOULD BE TESTED BUT. THEY WERE SO SPECIFIC and i genuinely wasnt prepared to argue for icj’s ineffectiveness cos my main arguments have always been it is effective in contributing to international law 🥰🥰 so instead I HAD TO PULL SOME SHIT OUT MY ASS ☺️ to even answer it and mind u i was ABOUT TO FALL ASLEEP 😃😭😭 like genuinely so when i finished that qn i lowkey was internally breaking down because THE GLOBAL ECONOMY QUESTION TESTED ON MIRACLES. for 3 YEARS IN A ROW 🤢🥴🥴🥴🥴 BDMEHDKSG BITCH WHY AM I SO UNLUCKY DJSHHSKSB LITERALLY i spent the whole day before looking at new protectionism oil crisis and debt crisis only for it all to be ✨irrelevant and useless✨ so i literally had to draw on statistics i briefly remembered fkhdkshskbs but that was still the least worst essay in the whole paper which 😳😳😳 says something huh so i had like 1.5 hours left for SBQ and i was trying so hard not to cry because WTF was the berlin crisis Khdkdjkshs like i didnt really have enough CK to bring in so i talked about marshall plan, bolshoi theatre but GUESS WHAT IDIOT 🗿🗿 was so confident 😎😎 the bolshoi speech was on 7 feb 1946 only to realise after the paper it was 9 feb 😃😭😭😭😭 I LITERALLY WROTE 7 FEB 1946 TWO TIMES CKHDKXHDMHD BITCHHHBCBUSHSNM well there goes my history grades 📉📉📉
H2 History Paper 2 (Difficulty: 8/10)
SEA? ASEAN?? I DONT NEED TO KNOW U ANYMORE BYEEEE omfg ok as usual ✨insomnia✨ so i somehow didnt sleep before my paper JHDKDJDK THIS IS REALLY BAD 🥴😭😭😭 AND IDK WHYYYY ok but yea wtf was that political stability question i literally BLANKED 📃 when i saw that shit like 🤡🤡 WESTERN IDEALS CKHDKDBDMBS anyways yea threw in some shitty stats before moving on to ✨ecOnOmiC dYnAMiSm✨ WHAT KIND OF LIT ESSAY ZKDHKDHDK like 🙄🙄 cambridge really said quirky ❤️🥰🛼🍧 i wanna CRYHJXBDJHSKS but i didnt study afc enough so i was forced to do the econ devt question 😽😽 and it went okkk??? if like my definitions are accepted i think it was my best essay out of the 4 for both ihist and seahist but NDHDKSHKS formation of asean i love you baby 🥰😳😳 come and form me and fuCK CNDHKDJS ugh yes daddy ASEAN come thru 😍👅👅👅 with that formations sbq with little to no CK 💋 but its ok because at least it aint pEdrA branCa Khdkdjkdhs ok so honesty sbq went decent??? not the best not the worst but yea i think source groupings were weird maybe a little off but 🥲🥲 its fine HistORY IS OVER CNJDKDBDM ITS HISTORY NOW 🤠😃😃
H3 Economics (Difficulty: 9/10)
sorry WHAT 😀😀😀😀 when i saw that behavioural econs qn i wanted to CRY BECAUSE MDHDKSJKSH what was that omg it was so broad LIKE halfway through it lowkey felt like i was just ✨regurgitating✨ my entire theme 1 notes LIKE 🙄🙄🙄 WHY WAS IT SO BROAD and i had like an hour 15 min to write everything BUT LIKE GURL — i wrote like sunk cost fallacy, loss aversion for that ✨graph✨ and rigour even tho my grades are more like 📉📉📉 BUT ANYWAYS yea i also wrote like composition, conjunction fallacy AND THE FUNNIEST SHIT HAPPENED 😭😭 like i had to draw a venn diagram but i didnt bring anything circular 🥴🥴 so instead i just unscrewed the top of my water bottle 🤡🤡 and like placed it on my paper and spent a whole ASS MINUTE drawing 😭😭 TWO CIRCLES 🥰🥰🥰🥰 the invigilator was probably like what kind of dumbassery 💀💀💀 but oh well so i basically wrote like 9 PAGES IM NOT EVEN KIDDING for a 35 MINUTE ESSAY 😭😭😭 and like YEA 🤧🤧 think i overwrote but hopefully it was all accurate anyways the other qn wasnt much better because DJHSKAHAKH like it sounded simple but there wasnt enough?? 🥴😔😔😔 to write?? like i had to talk about principal agent, moral hazard and adverse selection in insurance and cars market but then education i couldnt think of anything h3??? so i wrote merit goods 👁👄👁 and i just felt like 🙄🙄 what the fuck am i doing and by the time i finished i had like 1 hour 10 min for the whole CSQ which is less time than even for non AA students so 🥰🥰😌😌 my clownery strikes again 🤡🤡🤡 and i had to rush out like part a and b but i think they were ok AND THEN I REALISED jdhkshsksh WHAT H3 CAN I EVEN TALK ABOUT??? 👁👄👁 like the difficulty with h3 econs is that most of the time the csq gives u like 🖕🖕🖕 NO OPPORTUNITIES TO BRING IN H3 BUT IF U DONT U CANT GET THE TOP MARKS?? LIKE 😭😭😭 so i had to squeeze in nudge theory and stuff like status quo bias 🤧🤧😀😀😀😀😀 to ✨impress✨ them even tho theyre probably too tired to look thru my 9 PAGE ESSAY 💀💀😭😭😭😭 but anyways yea i was so annoyed cos part A which SEEMED like a h3 question cos common resource and tragedy resource waSNT IN THE EXTRACT so instead i HAD TO TALK ABOUT H2 STUFF like imperfect info and negative ext 🤬🤬🤬 OH WELL MY ECONS GRADES DO BE FLYING AWAY THO BUT 🤡🤡🤡 ITS OVERRRR
EDIT: I- HDJDHKDJD holy crap i didnt expect this many upvotes THANK YOU KFJDKDJS

from the SEC:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1801170/000119312521029637/d66346dex991.htm
click for all the tables/images.
​
EX-99.1 2 d66346dex991.htm EX-99.1
Exhibit 99.1
In Response to Short Seller Firm’s Questions
📷
Andrew Still-Baxter 18 min read
From:
Vivek Garipalli, CEO and Andrew Toy, President of Clover Health
Clover’s mission is to improve every life. We do that by scaling the Clover Assistant platform across physicians to drive a meaningful positive clinical impact towards as wide a percentage of our membership as possible. We align our incentives for the Clover Assistant by embedding our software platform inside of the business of our Medicare Advantage plan. As we improve outcomes, and lower costs, Clover can pass those savings on to consumers, improving the attractiveness of our plans and spurring rapid growth. We ultimately seek to transform healthcare for each and every one of us.
Clover welcomes questions about our business, as it gives us the opportunity to share our vision and to address any skepticism, whether founded or unfounded. As you will see from our detailed,
point-by-point response to the short seller firm’s questions, the alleged “report” is rife with ad-hominem attacks, sweeping inaccuracies and gross mischaracterizations. Importantly, the short seller firm did not contact Clover, and we had no knowledge of the short seller report prior to it being made publicly available. In our view, it belies a desperate attempt for publicity while sacrificing any regard for the truth.
In addition, we would note that the report’s title specifically calls out the involvement of “The King of SPACs,” Chamath Palihapitiya, and accuses him of a dearth of diligence. This, as we will show, is completely untrue, and we suspect this was done in order to sensationalize what is otherwise a rather underwhelming piece of research. Given the market’s latest views on short sellers, we believe that Hindenburg, which takes pains to call out their altruism in saying that they are not short on CLOV stock, is foolheartedly seeking to redeem itself by posturing as a white knight of the financial markets.
We’ve put together this response as rapidly as possible. We hope you will find it extremely informative.
##

1. Did Chamath and/or Clover know about the ongoing DOJ investigation? If so, why was it concealed from investors?

Chamath and Clover were fully aware of the DOJ inquiry.
To be clear, Clover does not believe it is, or has been, in violation of any rules or regulations related to the inquiry.
We went through both an IPO and de-SPAC due diligence process, and this subject received extensive focus and attention. Consistent with the views of Clover’s outside counsel, Social Capital’s outside counsel, and independently retained outside counsel of third parties, including IPO underwriters’ counsel, we concluded that the fact of DOJ’s request for information was not material and was not required to be specifically disclosed in our SEC filings.
How could a DOJ inquiry not be considered material information? As heavily regulated organizations participating in Medicare Advantage, Clover and its peers receive frequent requests for information from regulatory bodies. These are typically confidential. We promptly respond to these requests as and when they come in. As the short selling firm points out, the DOJ also often reaches out to ex-employees, including by civil investigative demands, as part of their information-gathering process.
For absolute clarity:
•
Clover Health believes it has made all appropriate disclosures, which were reviewed and vetted by outside counsel to all parties.
•
Clover has not received any civil investigative demands or subpoenas from the Department of Justice.
•
Clover has received a request for information from the Justice Department, to which, as we do with all requests from regulatory bodies, we responded. This was on a voluntary basis.
•
Clover has conducted a detailed review of matters potentially addressed by the DOJ request for information and has concluded that it is in compliance with all laws and regulations material to its business.
•
Up until the publishing of the short selling report yesterday morning, Clover was unaware of any other ongoing investigations of the Company, its officers, or any companies with which they are affiliated.
•
Following the report yesterday, Clover received notice of an investigation from the SEC. We believe this inquiry is based on the short selling report issued yesterday morning.

1. Is Clover aware of any other regulatory investigations into the company or Vivek Garipalli and his related companies? If so, what are the details?

Clover is unaware of any other ongoing regulatory investigations, except, as noted above, following the short selling firm’s report yesterday morning, Clover received an inquiry from the SEC. We believe this request is based on the short selling report issued yesterday morning.

1. Has Clover received any subpoenas or civil investigative demands from regulators? If so, how many and from which regulators?

No. Clover has not received any civil investigative demands or subpoenas from the Department of Justice. Clover has received a request for information from the Justice Department, to which, as we do with all requests from regulatory bodies, we responded on a voluntary basis.

1. Why does Clover’s subsidiary, “Seek Insurance” operate a website called “SeekMedicare.com” claiming to offer “independent” and “unbiased” advice on selecting Medicare plans without disclosing that it is owned by a Medicare plan provider, representing a blatant conflict of interest?

Seek Medicare is a startup that was incubated and set up as a separate company from Clover — it has its own management team, outside investor (a nationally-recognized public company), board and employees. Clover and the outside investor share in governance of Seek at the board level, including decisions such as the nomination of the CEO. Clover has the right to appoint a Board Member (currently Andrew Toy, Clover’s President & CTO), the outside investor has a right to appoint a Board Member (currently an employee of the outside investor), and the third Board Member, the CEO, must be mutually agreed upon. In addition, this investor has a unilateral contractual option to convert its investment into 50% equity ownership of Seek.
It’s not unusual for payors to create or have stakes in FMOs. What makes Seek different is its fundamental belief that Medicare consumers are simply not well-informed and that hurts their ability to get affordable, great healthcare. Seek is purpose-built to deliver against that problem. In order to make sure it could effectively pursue its goals, Seek was set up as a separate company, and it has raised nearly all of its capital from the outside investor.
At Clover, we obviously want everyone to pick a Clover plan, but we want to earn that business by providing great and affordable healthcare coverage. The most important thing is that Medicare eligibles end up in the right plan for them.
One final note here: Seek is a brand new startup, and its website is still in version 1.0. Please take a look back next week when its planned version 2.0 comes out.

1. Clover’s subsidiary, Seek Insurance, claims on its website “We don’t work for insurance companies. We work for you” despite literally being owned by Clover, an insurance company. What is your response?

While Seek is an affiliate, as we said, it operates separately from Clover, with its own financing and its own goals, which are to provide neutral, objective advice to Medicare eligibles and to empower, educate and assist them. Seek offers Clover plans but, more importantly, Seek also offers many more coverage options. In fact, in every market in which Seek operates, Seek endeavors to offer at least 80% of available plans in that market.
Even though Seek began very recently, it was able to stand up its agency in the most recent AEP and also launched a pilot in ~100 retail locations in six states, with a focus on markets in Georgia, New Jersey and Texas.
If you want to see the objectivity of Seek, we think the results of Seek’s initial sales period speak for themselves:
Percent of Seek sales, by insurance plan, in the most recent AEP:
1.
Cigna: 20%
2.
Humana: 20%
3.
CVS/Aetna: 17%
4.
Clover: 13.5%
5.
UnitedHealth Group: 11.3%
6.
WellCare: 8.5%
7.
Horizon: 5.7%
8.
Other (unrelated to Clover): 4.0%
In terms of scale, applications from Seek totaled less than 1% of the total applications Clover received in the most recent AEP.

1. How much has Clover paid B&H Assurance, the undisclosed outside brokerage firm run by Hiram Bermudez (its Head of Sales) since inception?

Clover has paid approximately $160k directly to B&H since 2017.
Hiram has disclosed the following in connection with his B&H relationship:
•
He does not receive any compensation, direct or indirect, from B&H Assurance for any work related to Clover.
•
He maintains a 50% ownership interest in B&H Assurance, which he has owned since before he joined Clover.
•
Hiram’s only work on behalf of B&H Assurance is monitoring compliance and negotiating contracts, from time to time, with parties that do not include Clover.
•
He maintains an ownership interest in B&H Assurance so that, in case he separates from Clover, he has the option to go back to the brokerage agency he co-founded and not have to start over.
As a general matter, Clover engages with brokers in each of its markets in order to distribute its plans. This is standard operating procedure in the Medicare Advantage space. Broker payments are statutorily defined by state insurance regulators, broker scripts are actively monitored by both internal compliance and CMS — including via “secret shopper” and other methods — and we take our obligations to CMS, our members and potential members very seriously. We believe our marketing materials and the brokers that represent us accurately reflect and portray our plans to our members and potential members and do so with transparency and integrity.

1. What portion of Clover’s business has been referred by B&H Assurance since inception? How many members?

Approximately 8,200 of our current members were referred by B&H Assurance to Clover.
While B&H has been a strong producer, we strongly disagree with the statement that B&H alone has “fueled” Clover’s growth. We believe that all Medicare Advantage plans have key producer relationships, and to say those relationships somehow illegitimately fuel growth is a misnomer.
We believe Clover plans are appealing because they are often amongst the lowest cost plans in our established markets, and they offer the same cost-sharing for in-network and out-of-network primary care and specialist visits. As we expand across the country, we intend to establish relationships with additional brokers and key producers.

1. Former employees told us that the relationship between Clover and B&H Assurance was transferred into the name of Hiram Bermudez’s wife “for compliance purposes”. NAIC filings confirm it was transferred into his wife’s (maiden) name weeks after the go-public announcement. What is the explanation for this?

The statement underlying this question is false and misleading. The reason that B&H Assurance’s appointment list does not include Clover is that B&H has what is referred to as a “downline” relationship with Ritter Insurance Marketing, which contracts directly with Clover (note that it appears B&H does contract directly with a number of other plans based on the cited NAIC record page). Rather than a nefarious circumstance, this is also a standard construct in the Medicare Advantage world.
Further, the statements interpreting Yesenia Rivera (Bermudez)’s NAIC profile are incorrect in their conclusions: (1) there was no transfer of any relationship between Clover and B&H Assurance from Hiram to his wife; (2) the NAIC filing simply shows that on August 14, 2020, Mrs. Bermudez was directly appointed by Clover Health to be able to sell Clover plans as an agent.
For context, Hiram underwent a major organ transplant surgery at the end of last summer due to chronic kidney disease. He, thankfully, is doing very well healthwise after the surgery. Hiram informed us that he and his wife made a decision for her to go through broker certification so that, if his condition deteriorated further, she would be able to take over his 50% ownership in B&H.
No one should ever feel compelled to share this type of personal and private health information publicly, but we deeply respect Hiram’s desire to disclose this to make clear he had no malicious intent. Hiram is highly mission-oriented and an amazing teammate at Clover, and pathetic attempts to slander him are shameful.

1. Will Clover produce the agreement showing the transfer of the relationship into Hiram Bermudez’s wife’s name? Who signed off on the agreement and which senior members of management knew about the deal?

See previous response.

1. Is Clover aware that disclosure of significant transactions with key senior employees is something investors like to know about, so they can be made aware of potential material conflicts of interest?

Consistent with applicable laws and regulations, Clover has conflict of interest policies requiring employees to disclose any existing or potential conflicts of interest. Clover follows SEC rules and regulations regarding the public disclosure of these relationships.

1. Was Chamath aware that the DOJ was looking into issues of potential upcoding when he mentioned, unprompted, on CNBC “they don’t motivate doctors to upcode or do all kinds of things in order to get paid”?

We agree (as does Chamath) that upcoding is a significant problem in the Medicare Advantage industry, and Chamath was fully aware that we have built the Clover Assistant to address the problems in the approaches used by other insurers.
To be clear, Chamath’s statement that “we do not motivate doctors to upcode or do all kinds of things to get paid” is accurate:
•
We pay Clover Assistant Primary Care physicians a fixed, flat payment per office visit.
•
Unlike other plans, we never compensate more for agreeing with the Clover Assistant. We never pay less for disagreeing with the Clover Assistant. This payment is fixed and guaranteed, and physicians use their own judgment on what they believe is clinically correct in relation to their direct understanding of the patient.
•
Put another way, a clinician could choose to disagree with every suggestion, which means there are no additional diagnoses and no additional risk adjustment codes, and they still get paid the exact same amount as if they did agree. There is NO financial motivation that we provide to physicians to answer in any particular way.
•
This is why we specifically do not believe in capitation contracts the same way that others do. These contracts often share risk adjustment back to physicians — i.e., an indirect way to reward them for coding more. Clover does not support those types of strategies.
To be clear, the focus of the Clover Assistant is driving clinical value. Because of its important role in early and improved detection of disease burden, accurate risk adjustment is one of the byproducts of clinical engagement with the Clover Assistant. Notably, however, much of the content in the Clover Assistant has absolutely nothing to do with risk adjustment. More than 50% of the clinical data we capture through Clover Assistant visits has no risk score impact whatsoever.
Here are just a few examples of the Clover Assistant driving clinical value:
📷
Colorectal Cancer Screening
Medication Therapy Management:
📷
For Chronic Kidney Disease
📷
For Statins
Addressing risk:
📷
Fall Risk
📷
Mortality Risk
Covid — 19 Response
📷
Mail Order and Home Drug Delivery

1. Clover reported that “onboarded” physicians used Clover Assistant for 92% of member visits in 2019, but never defined “onboarded”. We found that less than half of Clover’s in-network doctors are considered “Clover Preferred”. What is the definition of an “onboarded” physician? What percentage of Clover’s in-network doctors actually use the Clover Assistant?

This is a good question. Similar to enterprise software, there are two phases of bringing on physicians to Clover Assistant:
Contracting: Where we explain the benefits of Clover Assistant to the physicians and they have agreed to use the software.
Onboarding: Where the physicians have received their initial training and have created their accounts, and we have answered their questions. Basically, they’re ready to use the software. We also refer to the physicians as the “Live” physicians.
We use the Onboarded/Live number (as opposed to Contracted) when discussing engagement because that correlates to the physicians that are trained and ready to use the Clover Assistant. We typically have a pipeline of Contracted physicians waiting to be onboarded at any given time, and our goal is to go from Contracted to Live within 60 days.
Speaking to the second question, currently 22% of all in-network Primary Care Physicians are Live. This correlates to 4% of the total in-network physicians (including PCPs, specialists, etc.), but the Clover Assistant is currently built as a tool for PCPs, so we believe 22% is a more useful number.
That said, we don’t view either of those figures to be particularly relevant to the scalability and impact potential of the Clover Assistant. Instead, we focus on membership coverage. More specifically, as of YE 2020, 56% of our membership were attributed to one of those 22% Live PCPs. An additional 11% are attributed to a PCP who is contracted but in the onboarding pipeline (bringing us to 67% total coverage for Clover Assistant as of YE 2020).
This is because as we bring on physicians, we focus on contracting and onboarding those with more Clover members first, so a disproportionate number of our members are attributed to Clover Assistant-Live PCPs. As we continue to deploy the Clover Assistant, we intend to bring on the remainder of these physicians and we expect to see these numbers converge more. Right now we’re very proud of that 67% coverage number of all Clover members as of year-end 2020.

1. If Clover’s software is so “delightful” to use, why does Clover have to pay doctors extra ($200 per visit) just to use it?

We think this is a big part of the innovation model of Clover and why it’s so important that we build this tool internally as a payor.
The Clover Assistant is a SaaS-type enterprise clinical decision tool, but rather than charge physicians to use it (like regular software startups), we instead reimburse PCPs to encourage them to use it and to recognize the incredibly important role PCPs play in assessing and taking care of our members and controlling costs. PCPs receive less than 5% of total medical expenses in the US, and we believe that to solve the ballooning health care expenses in our country, we need to shift more of our focus, resources, and compensation to primary care doctors.
To be clear, the “extra $200 per visit” is not incremental or “just to use” the Clover Assistant, but represents the overall payment that covers both the PCP office visit and the use of the Clover Assistant. This translates to roughly twice the traditional Medicare fees paid to PCPs for an office visit, more in line with fees paid to specialists.
Most critically, this is a flat fee. We don’t pay them more to agree with us, or less when they disagree. A lot of programs effectively do this, and that creates moral hazards like upcoding or trying to skimp on care. We pay the flat fee because we want to reward PCPs for great data-driven primary care without creating those moral hazards and bad incentives.
Speaking to the delight point — we measure this in an objective, standard way in the form of Net Promoter Score surveys. We run these surveys within Clover Assistant for all Clover Assistant users on a quarterly basis to see how we’re doing in terms of user satisfaction and delight. We’ve traditionally received a score between 55–63 which we think is excellent — particularly for healthcare.
Here’s a screenshot of our NPS survey:
📷
Clover Assistant NPS Survey
📷
Our most recent NPS results from the end of last year.
As you can see, most of our Clover Assistant survey respondents give us very high ratings. There are a few “middle” scores, and there are, of course, some detractors who give us low scores. When we receive detractor feedback, we strive to send our Product and User Research teams to interview these users to find out how we can do better. We’re not perfect, but our fast iteration rate (releasing a new Clover Assistant version on average every 3–4 weeks) helps us continuously improve our platform.

1. Multiple doctors explained that it was difficult to remove prior diagnoses from the Clover Assistant. Is Clover aware of this? And can Clover guarantee that in future versions of the software doctors will be able to remove prior diagnoses, so as to ensure accuracy and cost efficiency?

For clarity, every diagnosis that appears in the Clover Assistant is for physician consideration, and they can choose to tell us they don’t think that diagnosis is currently relevant. Here’s a screenshot of how it’s shown.
📷
Every suggestion made is based upon clinical data that we have at Clover and personalized for each specific patient. Then the physician can tell us whether they can confirm the diagnosis. If they cannot confirm, they can easily select that option (shown above), and we ask them to share the reason why so we can update our internal data.
Note that when a physician tells us a diagnosis is not currently relevant, we do not show that diagnosis again that calendar year unless there is a new reason to believe that the diagnosis applies (e.g., new clinical data).
We may also resurface a diagnosis the following calendar year for reconfirmation. There’s a reason for this: many chronic diagnoses may come and go in terms of their diagnosis state. For example, diabetes may resolve (removing the diagnosis) if a patient loses weight, but if the patient puts the weight back on, diabetes will come back. Or, active cancer may go into remission, then unfortunately return. As such, it’s clinically appropriate to track these previous diagnoses.
Bonus Question: Is Clover Assistant actually helpful to physicians in providing better care above and beyond their EHR?”
This wasn’t actually in the list of questions addressed to us but was implicit in the short-selling firm’s commentary, so we wanted to hit this on the head, too.
We are incredibly proud of the ways, in only a few short years, we have been able to build the Clover Assistant platform in order to support PCPs in providing better care for our members. The Clover Assistant is not attempting to be an EHR; rather, we are focused on building a product that is supplemental to the EHR and driven by physician feedback.
We’ve supported the rapid transition to remote visits during the outbreak of COVID-19 this past spring, we’ve supported members getting their medications delivered to them when they couldn’t leave their home, and we’ve gotten clinical information otherwise not available to PCPs into the hands of those most equipped to utilize that information.
We also surface evidence-based protocols specific to a member’s disease profile. To be clear, we do this in order to help our members receive the right medications, access the right testing, and achieve better outcomes. By doing so, we pay more money now in order to decrease costs and patient suffering down the line.
If you take a look at our most recent investor presentation, you can easily see a view of that functionality on page 10. On page 19 of the same deck, you can also see a view of the Clover Assistant’s impact outside of accurate diagnosis capture.
We are just starting this journey, and know that, like with any software, there are plenty of opportunities for fine tuning and further improvement. But we are motivated by those challenges and solicit that feedback from the healthcare community and our in-network physicians regularly.
— The Clover Product, Clinical, and Engineering Leads

1. A former employee explained that Clover handed out gift cards to doctors and nurses to generate patient leads, a practice prohibited by CMS. These gift cards were justified as being for everything but recruitment, including “morale,” a “thank you,” “motivation,” and “friendship.” How do you respond?

Clover does not provide gift cards to doctors and nurses to generate patient leads.
Clover prides itself on a strong culture of compliance. If we were to discover any violation of CMS regulations or any applicable law or regulation, our compliance department would take decisive and strong corrective action.

1. Does CEO Vivek Garipalli deny that his CarePoint hospitals at one point charged the highest emergency room prices in the entire nation?

It is important to note that CarePoint is a separate and independent business entity, with different management teams, investor structures, and boards of directors. We do not comment on its operations. We also do not respond to ad hominem attacks against our officers.

1. Why did CEO Vivek Garipalli make a secret $1 million donation to the Mayor of Jersey City?

The aforementioned contribution to a PAC has been reported in the media. Like any private citizen, Vivek makes contributions. As our first market, New Jersey is near and dear to us, and Vivek believes the Mayor of Jersey City has done a commendable job of attracting businesses and developing affordable housing policies.
Vivek also donates to other causes in New Jersey and elsewhere — such as a $1MM contribution to the Goodwill Rescue Mission homeless shelter in Newark, NJ.

1. Why has Clover had such extensive executive turnover, with 3 CFOs, 3 COOs, and 2 General Counsels in the last 4 years?

Clover has evolved significantly over the past four years, and we needed different people with different skill sets at each stage of our journey. We are grateful for the contributions of every one of our employees, past and present, and are proud of our current management team. As is evident from our team’s background, they bring extensive experience across their areas of expertise. We believe we should always be looking to bring on more and more talented and mission-oriented individuals as we evolve and grow.
In particular, we are grateful to our co-founder Kris Gale for his work as the original Clover CTO to build the fundamentals of the Clover data platform. When Andrew Toy, our current President and CTO, came on board, one of the first things he did was focus on the creation of a way to turn data into improved care by physicians. The result of that was the Clover Assistant.

It seems like the same discussions come up around Reddit a lot, so I figured I'd gather up some common topics, and their rebuttals.
Many of these arguments can be expanded with more points and sources but I'm trying to keep this as compact and to the point as possible.

Myth 1: "Sexism against men is never institutional or systematic"

Many forms of sexism and discrimination against men are explicitly institutionalized or systemic in society.
Examples include police violence, court biases, incarceration, child custody discrimination, military service, educational biases, health research and spending, insurance, housing discrimination, reproductive rights, bodily autonomy rights, and many others.
The widespread ignorance and denialism around these issues can itself be interpreted as a form of systemic discrimination against men as well.
Note that some of these are institutional because they boil down to statutory legal rights which exist in the realm of government policy and administration. And the government is obviously an institution.

Myth 2: "Most politicians and CEOs are men, and this has led to a society that privileges men and disenfranchises women"

The fact that many positions of formal power are occupied by men does not translate into measurable privileges for the average man.
The assumption this is based on is the idea that men have an in-group bias and prefer other men over women.
Which is an idea that has been debunked over and over again in the academic literature. The gender bias among men is almost zero, and sometimes manifests as an out-group bias sightly in favor of women, not other men.
In-group bisses do exist among women though. In fact some research has found evidence for very strong gender biases among women. Including when it comes to educators, bosses, and hiring managers. Women in formal positions of power do actually seem to prefer other women over men, in much the same way that men are accused of behaving. So maybe this is just projection: people who themselves have gender biases assume that everyone else does as well.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15491274
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103101915112
https://link.springer.com/chapte10.1007/978-3-030-04384-1_9

Myth 3: "Women were uniquely oppressed in history compared to men"

Much like today, sexism in history was often two sides of the same coin. If it was unfair that women had to stay home and take care of their children then it was also unfair that men had to work long hours outside the comfort of their homes. Many people try to equate sexism to the history of racism, as if men were unilaterally oppressing women for their own benefit. And that's simply not an accurate view of history (nor is it a very healthy belief to have).
Gender norms were often unfair to women. But for most of history, women could own property, get divorced (where they usually took most of their husband's money), run businesses, and even be heads of state. Many large empires were ran by women, for example.
The reality of the situation though is that pregnancy (and breastfeeding) often dictated the need for women to have men supporting them. Birth control and baby formula didn't exist. So your options were basically abstinence, or marriage. Which was the same choice that men also had.
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Privileged_Sex.html?id=4szznAEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:2e88e3f6-b270-4228-b930-9237c00e739f/download_file?file_format=application/pdf&safe_filename=Item.pdf&type_of_work=Journal%20article
https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199582174.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199582174-e-036
https://archive.org/details/legalsubjection00baxgoog/
https://www.marxists.org/archive/beard/woman-force/index.htm
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1855/f217b082603d0ab37ea80c4741fceb8a4a23.pdf
"What about voting rights?"
Voting rights were historically tied to military service and the draft. It was never something that men got "for free" just for being men.
In England, most men couldn't vote until 1918, and that was only because they instituted a draft for all men during WWI.
Women aged 30 and older were also given the right to vote in 1918, and this came without the same obligation to serve in the military that men had. Women over 21 were given voting rights just 10 years later in 1928, which was the same age that men could vote. And that temporary age difference had a practical purposes: so many men died in WW1 that there was a need to even out the gender ratio.
So men have been allowed to vote for a whopping 10 years longer than women, at most. And that was only because of the mass, involuntary slaughter that they experienced around the world during WW1.
Other obligations that men had were paying taxes, attending caucuses, and signing up for bucket bridges to fight fires.
It took a few decades in some parts of the world for people to decide that it was fair for women to be able to vote without giving anything back to the state, but I think it's important to understand the context here. It wasn't misogyny or oppression but political theory. Specifically the question of whether or not it was fair to give women voting rights without equivalent responsibilities that were required from men (something known as a moral hazard, and that can be contextualized as "female privilege also sometimes harming women").
https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/parliamentary-collections/collections-the-vote-and-afterepresentation-of-the-people-act-1918/
http://www.familyofmen.com/when-did-men-and-women-have-the-right-to-vote-in-canada/
See also:
https://www.reddit.com/MensRights/comments/iu2ebj/women_could_and_did_own_property_and_have_rights/
https://www.reddit.com/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/l1byes/suffrage_was_primarily_a_class_issue_not_a_gende

Myth 4: "Domestic violence and sexual assault are primarily women's issues"

Domestic violence and sexual assault affects everyone, and at nearly identical rates between men and women.
In the US, roughly 37.3% of women have been victims of domestic violence, stalking, sexual harassment, and sexual abuse. Including 1.4 million women who experience sexual assault annually.
For men that same figure is 30.9%. Including 1.7 million men who experience sexually assault annually (defined as "made to penetrate"). The vast majority of these men are also victimized by women, not by "other men" (which is another myth).
This pattern is similar across the world, including in poor and underdeveloped nations (see here for a collection of studies), and is consistent with a wide range of research demonstrating "gender parity" between men and women for this topic.
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/NISVS-StateReportBook.pdf
http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Faculty/bibs/stemple/Stemple-SexualVictimizationPerpetratedFinal.pdf
https://1in6.org
It's also not true that there's a significant difference in severity between male and female victims. Around 66% of intimate partner homicides do have women as victims (which is hardly a staggering majority), but when you include intimate partner related suicide deaths (including assisted suicides), a greater number of men are killed because of domestic violence than women. These statistic also ignore the fact that lesbian relationships are more violent than heterosexual and gay male relationships. Which inflates these numbers and doesn't necessarily back up the idea that women are being uniquely victimized by men.
We should obviously work to fight against abuse in any form, but our current, gendered approach to this doesn't seem to be helping very much. It is also commonly used as an excuse for misandry. Many people who discuss abuse against women do not actually care about female victims. All they care about is advancing a culture of hatred and sexism against men.
https://web.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.5042/jacpr.2010.0141/full/html
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01506/full
See also:
https://www.reddit.com/MensRights/comments/f4rvop/some_sources_on_the_severity_of_domestic_violence/
https://www.reddit.com/MensRights/comments/koinom/some_sources_on_the_sexual_abuse_of_men_and_boys/
https://www.reddit.com/MensRights/comments/f5tes5/gender_parity_for_sexual_assault_academic_studies/
"But women are afraid to walk down dark alleyways at night!"
As they should. And as do men. Most violent crime targets men. And fear is subjective. This is hardly evidence of some kind of unique oppression against women (at least one that doesn't also affect men), and it ignores the fact that men are usually afraid of finding themselves in those same situations as well.
Men are stronger and more capable of defending themselves so I wouldn't blame someone for having gendered views or assumptions here. But let's try not to minimize male victimization or blame it on things like "male oppression".

Myth 5: "False allegations are extremely rare"

Multiple studies have found alarmingly high rates of false allegations in society.
As many as 1 in 7 men have been falsely accused at some point in their life, and they often have to live with those allegations even after proving their innocence.
In addition, around 1 in 20 women have also been falsely accused at some point during their life.
False allegations are particularly common when it comes to child custody and divorce, where well over half of all allegations have been estimated to be false. There is also a common racial element that targets minority men. Especially in history during the era of lynchings in the US.
http://www.saveservices.org/dv/falsely-accused/survey/
http://www.prosecutorintegrity.org/psurvey-over-20-million-have-been-falsely-accused-of-abuse/
https://quillette.com/2019/04/16/divorce-and-the-silver-bullet/
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14977/14977-h/14977-h.htm
See also:
https://www.reddit.com/MensRights/comments/e6w4yc/i_call_bullshit_on_the_false_rape_accusation/

Myth 6: "Men commit suicide more often than women, but women still attempt suicide more often than men"

This idea has its origins with faulty hospital reporting which lumps suicide attempts in with self-harm (which is something that's more common among women). Women are also more likely to report their suicide attempts than men. And even if this statistic were accurate, it ignores the obvious fact that a suicide survivor can attempt again, thus artificially inflating this statistic.
The fact is, most suicid deaths are men, and most evidence points to there being more unique attempts by men. Any evidence that men are "better" at it than women has been interpreted as evidence for greater motivation of success, due to the very same factors that lead them to attempt suicide to begin with. Not as evidence that women are somehow attempting suicide at rates similar to men in the background.
https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-017-1398-8
See also:
https://www.reddit.com/MensRights/comments/cvpyve/comment/ey5xeda

Myth 7: "Men make more money because of their gender, and this is evidence of male privilege"

Existing gender norms encourage men to earn money in order to meet the financial demands that are placed on them by women.
This causes them to work harder and sacrifice more for their careers than women. Which they do in part because their income is tied to how successful they are with women, and whether or not they qualify as "marriage material".
The wage gap is therefore an example of a gender norm that harms men just as much as it does women.
92% of workplace deaths are men. Men work on average an extra 4 to 10 hours a week (depending on your source) than women. They start working at a younger age (often skirting child labor laws). They retire later (which is also during their peak earning years). And they die sooner than women. Men have worse health outcomes than women and that's largely because of the pressures that society puts on them to be successful and earn money to spend on women.
This is the other side of the wage gap that is equally as important, and that is equally as harmfully to men as it is to women. And it's really just the tip of the iceberg.
In many ways the wage gap is just a reflection of the financial exploitation of men in society. Which is facilitated by things like hypergamy and unfair marriage and divorce practices.
See also:
https://www.reddit.com/MensRights/comments/kzvfcg/about_the_wage_gap/
https://www.reddit.com/MensRights/comments/dxaimc/the_wage_gap_is_created_by_women_and_reflects/

Myth 8: "Men don't go to the doctor because of toxic masculinity"

The main reason that men sometimes don't seek help is a lack of time to see a doctor.
Men work longer hours than women at jobs that are less flexible, and more stressful, than jobs that women usually work at. Men overall engage in an extra hour of paid and unpaid labor per day compared to women, and an extra 45 minutes commuting to jobs that are further away. Meaning men on average have quite a bit less free time to go see a doctor than women do.
This is also something that changes during retirement: retired men are just as likely to go to the doctor as retired women.
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/8/e003320
A general lack of help and support, especially financial support, for men who need medical help also contributes to this. There is a myth that men are better taken care of than women which has resulted in gendered policies that help women, but exclude men. Even though it's men who often need that help more.

Myth 9: "Men don't speak up about sexism as much as women, so it's obviously not as big of an issue"

This is because people are less likely to care or listen to them. In part because many men who do speak up are silenced and accused of being misogynistic. A situation known as testimonial injustice or epistemic oppression.
Men are told to keep quiet and many end up internalizing the idea that only women can be discriminated against, since this is what society tells us to believe. Instead, men often adopt different terminology when they discuss gender issues. Like referring to differences in treatment between men and women as "double standards" instead of sexism or discrimination.

Myth 10: "Most men's issues are caused by men themselves"

Most men's issues are caused by gender norms and those gender norms are enforced by women just as much as they are by men.
Men's issues are often just one side of the coin, and usually reflect disadvantages that women face as well.
One of the biggest gender norms in society is hypergamy, or the tendency for women to try to marry up, and for men to marry down. And this gender norm is mostly enforced by women, not by men.
Two other gender norm that are enforced by women is the providership gender norm, and the childcare gender norm. Which also causes women to perform more unpaid work and earn less money than men in the labor market.
A fourth gender norm that is enforced by women more than men is the "boys don't cry bias". Which is mainly instilled in young boys by their mothers and by female school teachers. In fact, fathers and male school teachers actually fight against this gender norm.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053535711000321
https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/04/messages-of-shame-are-organized-around-gende275322/
https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/09/24/chapter-1-public-views-on-marria
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/akillewald/files/money_work_and_marital_stability.pdf
https://www.fatherhood.org/fatherhood/maternal-gatekeeping-why-it-matters-for-children
https://news.uoguelph.ca/2019/11/mothers-push-gender-stereotypes-more-than-fathers-study-reveals/
See also:
https://www.reddit.com/MensRights/comments/gjtj10/most_people_regardless_of_gender_prefer_to_stay/

Myth 11: "Toxic masculinity is harming men and their mental health"

The concept of toxic masculinity has never been empirically tested, and some research questions the validity of it in the context of psychology and mental health.
Even if you do think it is valid though, it is still commonly used in a way that is sexist and hateful torwards men.
In recent years it has become associated with female supremacy, feminist hostility towards men, and misandry in general. And as a result, the vast majority of men find the term to be sexist and offensive.
Men who identify with traditional masculine values have greater self-esteem, better mental health, better relationships with women, and are usually better educated than men who are opposed to masculinity or who accept feminist views about the patriarchy and toxic masculinity.
The key to better mental health for men might therefore be an embracement of masculinity, not a shunning of it. Instead of trying to redefine masculinity, we should work to understand it better, and offer men better services based on an honest acknowledgement that men's and women's mental health might require different approaches.
Men are not "defective women", and treating men's mental health in that context does not seem to be working very well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/apa-guidelines-men-boys.html
https://zenodo.org/record/3871217#.X-p1ji2l2J_
https://link.springer.com/chapte10.1007/978-3-030-04384-1_5

Myth 12: "Most men's activists just hate women or are opposed to feminism. They don't really care about men."

This rhetoric is normally used to silence the voices of men (and women) who support men's rights and prevent them from expressing themselves. Which makes it another example of testimonial injustice or epistemic oppression.
The fact is that many people do care about men's issues, and that's why they become MRAs. Feminism does get discussed in the men's movement, but there are a couple reasons for that:

1. Many feminists, "radical" or otherwise, have advocated against men and have even pushed for public policy in ways that are harmful to men or discriminates against men. Feminists themselves tend to not fight against this, meaning it's often up to MRAs to address it.
   
2. Many MRAs are themselves current or ex-feminists who were ostracized for daring to take the feminist rhetoric about "also caring about men" a little too seriously.
   

Warren Farrell is a great example of this. He used to be on the board of directors for NOW, the world's largest feminist organization.
And then he said that we need to work on child custody equality and reproductive rights for men. Topics that he assumed should fall under the umbrella of feminism since they are issues pertaining to gender equality. Instead of agreeing with him though, he ended up being excommunicated from the feminist movement. And now he's often regarded as the "father of the modern men's movement" for carrying on his advocacy outside of feminism.
The problem that many MRAs have with feminism is that it usually stops half way when advocating for gender equality.
So sometimes what MRAs are doing is just taking it the rest of the way towards actual gender equality. Our frustration with feminists comes from the fact that they refuse to see this as valid (or do it themselves to begin with).
See also:
https://www.reddit.com/MensRights/comments/ihmb2p/by_denying_that_the_feminist_establishment_is/
https://www.reddit.com/MensRights/comments/9v6tqj/a_list_about_feminism_misandry_for_anyone_who/

Myth 13: "Men don't receive custody of their children because they're bad fathers and don't bother requesting custody"

Academic research simply does not back this up. The only study that ever found something like this was discovered to be purposefully fraudulent, although that hasn't stopped people from trying to repeat this. The fact is that men are widely discriminated against on numerous different fronts when it comes to child custody and other areas involving family court law.
Note also how hateful this rhetoric is. This is the kind of stuff that you find repeated by feminists, and it simply doesn't treat this topic in a fair and honest manner. Fathers love their children and many fight tooth and nail just to get a few hours a week to spend with them. The system is broken and it represents a grave social injustice that is deeply unfair to fathers and their children.
https://www.sharedparenting.org/2019-shared-parenting-report
See also:
https://www.reddit.com/MensRights/comments/ilzceq/cmv_equal_child_custody_for_mothers_and_fathers/

Myth 14: "Most child abusers are men"

A majority of child abuse is actually committed by women, and especially by mothers. This is even more true when you include emotional abuse and neglect instead of just physical abuse.
By some metrics, the biological father is the safest person for a child to be with. This is because when men do abuse children, it often happens while under the custody of the mother. Who is sometimes complicit in the abuse or even encourages it.
Close to half of child abductors and traffickers are also women, not men. And many of their victims are boys. Boys face sexual abuse and are also used for forced labor and organ harvesting. They are less likely to survive or escape, are less likely to be reported on or identified, and they suffer from higher rates of abuse than girls who are trafficked.
And yet very little attention is given to this. Missing boys, and especially missing minority boys, are often ignored by society and the media. To the point that people often assume that most of the victims are girls. Something which is known as the missing white woman syndrome (although in Canada there is a lot of attention given to missing indigenous women, even though 71% of missing indigenous people are men and boys).
Note that I'm not saying these things to attack women, imply that they shouldn't receive custody, or to downplay the plight of girls. Which is a lot more than you can say about people who try to paint men as the villains in this picture. We should however be fair about what the facts are, and give male victimization, including victimization by women, the attention that it deserves.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16165212
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/childmaltreatment-facts-at-a-glance.pdf
http://www.breakingthescience.org/SimplifiedDataFromDHHS.php
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0145213416302599
https://www.savethechildren.org/us/charity-stories/child-trafficking-myths-vs-facts
Fair is fair and equal is equal. Gender equality will never be fixed if we refuse to look at both sides of the coin. We need to be honest about what the problems are, and stop ignoring them when they involve men, fathers, and boys.

This has been an absolutely miserable year but finally it’s coming to an end, and even looking up now that Facebook and Google are being sued by Federal and State governments. If you played Cyberpunk I’m sure you’ll also have your fingers crossed that both companies get the sledgehammer into little pieces, with Amazon and the App Store soon to follow. Next year is up in the air right now; it could be the year XR is completely strangled by those soulless corpo’s at Facebook, or it could be the year that OpenXR, anti trust action, and consumer apathy towards VR cut their legs out from under them. Things look completely up in the air at this point. So take the holidays and enjoy VR while you still can, next year we might just be playing Valve’s Citadel while the ship goes down.
Well Steam’s Winter Sale is here and it’s a great time to pick up a lot of great games, hidden gems, and so on. This is my list of games to pick up. Some of them are the best prices these games have ever had. I categorized them by price tier, and I put a few standouts in bold either because they’re a great game or a great deal, or both.
Merry Christmas
[I also made a hardware guide for headsets and PC components, a guide to using steamVR, a guide about how to use the Index for AR, and a master acab list of great VR games, demos, and software]
The Sale ends on January 5th at 10AM PT
​

• PAYDAY 2 (-90%, $0.99) Has a full VR mode that makes the whole game VR and lets you play with flatscreen players. It’s a lot more impressive than you would expect, especially at this price (free with the base game). It has two handed guns, full access to all the content and crossplay with non VR players, a UI on your tablet watch, etc
• Half-Life 2 (-80%, $1.99) You need to use Garry's Mod to run this in VR but the whole game works.
• Naked Sun (-90%, $0.59) Two hand wave shooter style game where you’re being moved through a robot city and fighting ogg enemies with guns and a shield.
• Scanner Sombre (-75%, $1.49) Spelunking through echolocation and a great art style. At this price and with this concept I’d say it’s definitely something to experience in VR.
• Steady (-50%, $2.49) Like the lockpicking puzzle from Alyx or those boardwalk games were you move a ring over wire without touching them together. 50 levels.
• fpsVR (-20%, $3.19) This is a must have utility for SteamVR. My guide to using SteamVR explains why and how to use it.
• Windlands (-90%, $1.99) the first windlands game, it’s a grappling hook style adventure exploration game.
• Evolution VR (-51%, $0.49) This is like that first phase of Spore, where you’re an amoeba eating larger ones and evolving with new limbs. I consider it a steal at this price, although it’s going to become free soon according to the devs.
• PROZE: Enlightenment (-85%, $2.99) Puzzle adventure game set in the tundra
• Evil Robot Traffic Jam HD (-80%, $0.99) Tower defense
• Interkosmos (-33%, $3.34) A space survival game where you’re sitting in a tiny broken space capsule and have to make it back to earth.
• Neonwall (-90%, $0.99) Guide a ball through neon obstacle puzzles
• Spuds Unearthed (-75%, $2.99) RTS TD type thing. I found its balance super frustrating when I tried it but it has a lot of polish and this price is great.
• Squishies (-75%, $2.49) Puzzle game with nice art that looks polished
• Zooma VR (-66%, $2.03) Look at the steam page, it’s basically an adaptation of that arcade game where you shoot colored balls at other colored balls to match them up and pop them.
• Obstruction : VR (-68%, $3.19)
• Fingers: Mini Games (-35%, $1.94) Screw around with finger physics mini games with your index controllers.
• Chroma Lab (-40%, $2.99) Particle simulator that’s kind of trippy
• Drone Hero (-90%, $0.99) Drone obstacle course game
• Defendion (-80%, $$2.19) Laned fantasy strategy game
• Bonfire (-50% $2.49) A little story where you’re crash landed on an alien planet with Ali Wong and meet cartoon aliens
• Cliffstone Manor (-75%, $1.99) Difficult escape room style game
• Moonshot Galaxy (-65%, $1.74) space mini golf game
• Protogon VR (-80% $1.99) Combination minigolf pinball game with neon crazy graphics
• Power Tools VR (-50%, $0.99) Chip away at a stone block with power tools
• Race The Sun (-80%, $1.99) Endless forward obstacle racer with options VR support
• SpellPunk VR (-73%, $2.96) Competitive spell casting game
• Strings (-90%, $0.99) It’s a smaller, more basic game, basically a shooter with different items you use to fight enemies as you teleport around stages.
• SweeperVR (-50%, $1.99) Minesweeper in 3 Dimensions
• PolyCube (-50%, $2.49) complex 3D tetris
• UNTITLED (-50%, $2.49) 3D surreal puzzle game
• Intruders: Hide and Seek (-90%, $1.99) Gamepad horror game
• WRG games bundle (-96%, $0.65) Escape room and a non VR game

​

• Apex Construct (-75%, $4.99) This is where the energy battery puzzles come from. It's early VR but really strong on story, progression, and interactions, the combat is mostly archery
• FORM (-70%, $4.44) “A surreal adventure where puzzles are built from dreams and memories”
• NIGHTSTAR: Alliance (-60%, $3.99) Bullet Hell in space, but with a story and customization
• Blasters of the Universe (-75%, $3.74) Bullet Hell with a lot of polish and progression and you unlike new weapon parts
• FREEDIVER: Triton Down (-50%, $4.49) Drowning simulator, shorter but high quality
• Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (-70%, $4.49) This is one of the best VR party games, easy to play remotely or in the same room with other plays holding a printed out or mobile browser manual helping the VR player disarm a bomb.
• Out of Ammo Fun Bundle (-78%, $4.48) A bit rough but still getting updates and still low poly fun. First one has multiplayer. They’re both FPS/RTS but the first one is war themed, while the second one is a zombie game.
• Orb Labs (-50% $4.49) A stealth puzzle game where you use different orbs to complete puzzles around lasers, turrets, and other hazards.
• Thumper (-80%, $3.99) Best selling surreal rhythm game, best with a gamepad. I definitely recommend it if you are fine with the gamepad controls.
• Vetrix (-20% $4.79) Tetris inspired. It has a two layer deep grid allowing for lots of 3D shapes that you can stick into place by hand in a twist on the usual formula. It has its own 8bit tunes, special blocks, multiple modes, and a bunch of color profiles based on the gameboy’s aesthetic.
• Transpose (-75%, $4.99) A game where you solve puzzles with a recording of yourself. It’s one of the best and more creative puzzle games in VR.
• Operation Warcade VR (-75%, $4.99) Old but the concepts work really well. It’s like a 3D light gun game that pulls you in for some moments
• Echo Grotto (-50%, $3.99) Echo Grotto is a spelunking game with stylized graphics. You pick your gear and then use a throwing based teleportation system that leaves a trail behind you.
• HATCHICK (-75%, $3.74) Like Xortex from the lab, a bullet hell inside a dome
• Journey For Elysium (-50%, $4.99) Greek mythology adventure game, a black and white art style
• Just In Time Incorporated (-75% $3.74) You appear in slow motion to save people who have Just In Time Insurance. Super basic graphics but the gameplay is fun and for this price it’s a good buy.
• Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin (-75%, $4.99)
• Shooty Skies Overdrive (-50%, $4.99) It’s a bullet Hell with polish and a voxel style.
• Portable Farm (-20%, $3.99) It’s a light farming game, but the hook is that this runs on top of other games like an overlay.
• Balloonatics (-65%, $3.49) Single and multiplayer hot air balloon combat. A big update is coming.
• Axegend VR (-50%, $4.99) Tower Defense mixed with some fantasy combat
• Buzludzha VR (-60%, $4.79) If you like VR tourism then this is pretty good.
• Carnival Games VR (-75%, $4.99) Party game style game. It crashes unless you turn off the game’s haptics in input bindings
• Bandit Point (-50%, $4.99) Renaissance robot shooter where you possess different robots in combat
• Downward Spiral: Horus Station (-70%, $5.99) Zero G space thriller
• Flotilla 2 (-50%, $4.99) Turn based RTS in 3D between space battleships
• VR Furballs - Demolition (-60%, $4.79) Angry birds style game
• Townsmen VR (-50%, $4.99) This was barebone and felt like a demo, but it’s going to get a big update that scales it up into a game and should be free for anyone who owns this version.
• Starblazer (-75%, $4.99) A 3D space RTS with multiplayer
• Skyworld: Kingdom Brawl (-50%, $4.99) This is a classic VR RTS scaled down to a quick 1v1 RTS battle.
• RuneSage (-60%, $3.99) Open world puzzle fantasy game
• 2945VR (-45%, $3.29) Space shoot em up

​

• Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son (-33%, $10.04) Sequel to the movie with a similar idea where you relive the same day over and over and progress
• HORIZON VANGUARD (-33%, $10.04) Sega Saturn Style arcade shooter on a hoverbike. Don’t let the graphics fool you, this is a really well made puzzle game in a Sega Saturn style
• Fujii (-35%, $9.74) Gardening with a weird forest spirit
• Garden of the Sea (-50%, $5.99) Animal Crossing looking zen farming game by the devs behind Budget Cuts 2, early access but steady updates are coming adding features and more mechanics..
• GORN (-50%, $9.99) Cartoon melee colosseum game, VR classic that has killed a thousand controllers
• Contractors (-50% $9.99) smallest player base of the big shooters but full of good ideas and strong gunplay. Now has mod support, including custom maps, weapons, and modes like world war II, ninja warrior, Halo, etc
• 1976 - Back to midway (-50%, $7.49) Just came out, it’s a good game, already on sale. This is a good deal. This is a 2.5D shoot em up that has “immersion zones” where you take direct control in first person. It really captures the idea of stepping inside an old arcade machine really well.
• Creed (-75%, $7.49) This is a pretty good multiplayer boxing game that goes for a more arcade style, Graphics are good, it’s polished, and obviously it’s licensed from the movie
• Bizarre Barber (-50%, $5.99) Arcade game about cutting aliens’ hair as they come by in passing subway cars. It goes for a more surrealist vibe.
• Garry's Mod (-33%, $6.69) This needs a community hack to be VR, but it works and even lets you play HL2 in VR
• Cubism (-20%, $7.99) A tetronomo style puzzle where you need to figure out how to make the finished shape out of the pieces you’re given, in 3D. Feels like it’s made by Apple.
• Gravity Lab (-40%, $8.99) Rube goldberg puzzler where you build machines to get the ball from the start to the finish, sci fi settings.
• Pierhead Arcade Bundle (-63%, $7.48) The first one is stronger and a great little VR boardwalk with multiplayer to show off to people with high quality minigames,and with an update this week they made it so if you own both, then the games carry over into 2, which has index support and a ton of its own games too.
• Prison Boss (-60%, $7.99) The best crafting game in VR, you play a prisoner who makes and sells contraband, so it’s business sim as well since you buy equipment and supplies to make various products.
• Tabletop Simulator (-50%, $9.99) (4-Pack for $29.99) (Most DLC -50%,) Look, the VR support here has issues but since it’s a board game simulation all you need to do is make sure you can sit down, move around, and grab things (just make your own bindings from the desktop SteamVR settings). Since it uses the Steam workshop it’s an insane value with endless excellent quality content. The matchmaking system means you can play all kinds of games at all hours with thousands of people.
• Westworld Awakening (-80%, $5.99) If you love the show this is a must have, pretty well received as just a good game overall.
• Superfly (-34%, $9.89) This is a super hero sim game in VR. You can have six different types of powers with their own movement and combat mechanics around a cartoon city
• Ultrawings (-50%, $7.49) Super user friendly flight sim with VR controls. I definitely recommend it. You complete missions to get money to spend on new planes across several cartoonish islands that you fly between.
• Shooty Fruity (-55%, $8.99) One of the best wave shooters in my opinion, but the controls are a little broken for the Index since it doesn’t use SteamVR input.
• RUSH (-60%, $7.99) Wing suit skydiving game
• Climbey (-31% $6.89) A classic VR climbing game with multiplayer and steam workshop support for courses
• Space Pirate Trainer (-40%, $8.99) Everyone’s favorite wave shooter, one of the first wave of room scale VR games that came out with the Vive. There’s no progression but it handles the mechanics of dodging bullets and dealing with growing waves of enemies really well with a lot of modes for your weapons.
• Spectro (-50%, $7.49) Ghost hunting game that feels a bit like it’s made for kids but it’s still a good roguelike.
• The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets (-50% $7.49) Cutesy puzzler abou finding a bunch of stolen pets on little floating islands you interact with.
• ViSP - Virtual Space Port (-50%, $7.49) You build these blocky space stations in third person trying to hold off attacks by aliens.
• A Fishermans Tale (-35%, $9.74) A recursive puzzle game where you’re a fisherman in a box messing with a fisherman in a box who has a fisherman in a box…
• I Expect You To Die (-60% $9.99) A james bond style escape room game with a ton of polish and a lot of content, one of the best of the genre.
• Ultimate Fishing Simulator VR (-66%, $10.09) It’s realistic fishing, in VR.
• The Forest (-50%, $9.99) Port, has good co op, suniverseurvival with crafting and base building in a forest full of mutants.
• The Mage's Tale (-70%, $8.99) I haven’t been able to try this one, but it’s well reviewed and has a nice art style.
• 2MD: VR Football (-30% $9.09) This is basically quarterbacking in VR. You throw the ball but you don’t run around with it. Also you throw with the trigger by default, for safety reasons. It’s still fun, but it’s definitely not a full football experience.
• Deism (-30%, $5.59) This a god game with a low poly art style, it’s in early access with a lot of updates.
• Cave Digger (-50%, $9.99) Steampunk mining game with multiple endings
• The Thrill of the Fight (-20% $7.99) This is the more realistic boxing game more like a simulation, and it's good as a workout.
• Carly and the Reaperman (-50%, $9.99) Escape from the Underworld (-50%, $9.99) One of the best asymmetric games, this is a co op platformer adventure where the VR player helps the gamepad player. Works with Parsec/Remote Play Together
• Grapple Tournament (-34%, $9.89) Grappling hook PvP arena
• Gun Club VR (-60% $7.99) For a gun sim, get H3. The value in this game are the missions where you have to hit cardboard targets across different themes and weapon types like WWII, modern day, zombies, or carnival style targets.
• Swords of Gurrah (-30%, $6.99) Multiplayer sword fighting with a little community.
• Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (-75%, $7.49) Port of third person game, really high quality but gamepad controls.
• IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad (-85%, $7.49) A HOTAS based WWII combat flight sim
• Marble Land (-60%, $5.99) A physics base puzzle game about getting the marble to the goal
• Combat Tested (-69%, $6.19) This is a mixed game, but it’s really creative with the gritty super powers you have while you try to escape from a lab full of people trying to stop you.
• Blind (-75%, $6.24) You can only see by making noise (canes, throwing things, etc)
• Adapt or Perish (-40%, $5.99) Evolutionary strategy game with a VR mode
• Pinball FX2 VR (-60%, $5.99) Made for VR realistic pinball
• Assetto Corsa (-90%, $7.93) Racing sim with optional VR
• Seeking Dawn (-80%, $5.99) Not great, but super ambitious with story and alien enemies and crafting and base building and just generally more than I expected, and it actually kind of works.

​

• Pavlov VR (-40%, $14.99) Pavlov is basically a game that set out to be Counter Strike VR and became the Garry's Mod of VR and the most creative community outside VRChat. I’ve seen and played everything from roller skate racing, a remake of the entirety of Super Mario 64, TF2 Payload, over a hundred TTT maps, some of the best Battle Royale I’ve seen in VR, Slow-mo zero G modes, SCP, LifeMod and DarkRP, five completely different kinds of zombie modes, and a lot more. It’s been a fixture of SteamVR and pretty soon they’re releasing a World War II update with character models and new guns for the USSR, USA, Germany, and UK, new maps, and multi user tanks that you use in first person. It’s as much a must have as there can be, as long as you like multiplayer shooters.
• Vertigo Remastered (-40%, $14.99) A 19 year old genius kid who worked at Valve and Cloudhead games made this on his own. It feels like a scaled down Alyx with nice physics, creative weapons and tools, and great personality across a campaign.
• Paper Beast (-30%, $13.99) One of the standout PSVR games. You’re in a surreal papercraft desert with dynamic and lifelike paper animals. It has a story and then a smaller sandbox mode. It’s a surreal style experience that works well in VR.
• Jet Island (-35%, $12.99) take on a huge open world with an island of enemies on your hoverboard
• Falcon Age (-35%, $12.99) You play a young falconer who uses her whip and bird to fight off colonizing robots that are strip mining her planet. It’s a pretty high quality game and semi open world.
• Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency (-50%, $14.99) VR stealth with a portal style teleport gun and a bow. It’s well written and has a lot of polish. Sequel to one of the standout classics of early VR.
• Superhot VR (-40% $14.99) This is the game that sold me on VR. It’s basically the Matrix, where time moves when you move. It’s actually not a port of the original superhot, which is why the sequel isn’t coming to VR. I think it’s slightly overrated, there isn’t a ton of content, it just seems more concise than the marketing conveys
• Gadgeteer (-20% $11.99) Even more rube goldberg puzzler, but more of a dominos style of gameplay.
• Ironwolf VR (-30%, $13.99) Submarine simulator, has destroyer mode now too with coop and some competitive multiplayer. I definitely recommend this as a co op experience.
• Hotel RnR (-40% $11.99) You’re a dead rocker who makes a deal with the devil to destroy hotel rooms
• Duck Season (-35%, $12.99) Make someone else play this without explaining it to them. Tell them it’s just Duck Hunt.
• Down the Rabbit Hole (-40%, $11.99) Third person Alyx in Wonderland game with player choice
• 3dSen VR (-40%, $11.99) 3D NES emulator that makes them feel like a totally new experience.
• The Wizards Bundle (-68%, $15.92) The first one is an okay wave shooter, the second is more of an adventure game with great graphics and more variety.
• Thief Simulator VR (-27%, $14.59) A semi open world game where you go around stealing people’s phones, jewelry, and cars.
• Vox Machinae (-45%, $13.74) If you like Mech games this is basically a must buy, you control it by hand with all the bits and bobs of the cockpit and the graphics look really good. VR and flatscreen with crossplay multiplayer.
• Yupitergrad (-15% $12.74) A grappling hook adventure game set aboard a collapsing soviet space station
• Windlands 2 (-60%, $11.99) This is a grappling hook style game with somewhat basic graphics but large worlds and big enemies. Some people have called it the best spiderman game in VR.
• Hello Puppets (-30%, $13.99) Cartoon horror with weird humor, your hand is an evil puppet
• Moss (-50% $14.99) A third person platformer adventure game about a little mouse
• Skytropolis (-55%, $11.24) A vertical citybuilder, which is a rare genre in VR. It’s from 2017 and doesn’t get updates any more but it does work and it’s not a bad game in the genre.
• Pixel Ripped 1995 (-30%, $13.99) A love letter to 16 bit gaming. You play video games inside the game and have to avoid getting caught playing in the middle of the night, etc.
• ModBox (-25% $11.24) This is a sandbox game creator with steam workshop support. IT has a lot of potential and supports asymmetric play, VR multiplayer, and creation inside and outside of VR.
• New Retro Arcade: Neon (-35%, $12.99) This is kind of buggy, and you need to use the unofficial arcade builder, but as a social VR experience for friends it can be pretty cool. Roms aren’t shared online unless the other people are on parsec or something, but a few activities like movies, the built in games, and bowling are actually multiplayer. The arcade is persistent for you and your friends even if you’re doing different things in different rooms.
• Phasmophobia (-10%, $12.59) The big new co op horror multiplayer game, but this one also supports VR
• Synth Rider (-40% $14.99) This is the closest Beat Saber style game to the original, with a smoother style of gameplay. But the maps feel unbalanced, like every difficulty or gameplay setting is the exact same map just being automatically tweaked. This can make it feel unfair or constricting.
• Into the Radius (-30%, $20.99) Basically Stalker VR, kill enemies and complete missions for cash as you progress
• Mini Motor Racing X (-50%, $19.99) Racing game that you control with your actual hands which is great but the tracks can be pretty small and with lots of tight turns since it’s a micro car game. Also has a rocket league mode which is fun.
• Stride (-25%, $14.99) Basically mirror’s edge in VR. You run and jump and wall run across different environments, with some combat and stealth too. There are two modes out now and another one coming soon with a story.
• BattleGroupVR (-30% $17.49) This is probably the most polished RTS in VR, made by one dev but it’s right up there with final assault and works better in singleplayer. Multiplayer is being tested right now. It’s a space real time RTS where you’re on the bridge of one of your ships and you can command the others in holograms, see the battle in third person, and the graphics are great. There’s a story and campaign too
• Until You Fall (-20%, $19.99) This is basically Infinity Blade in VR. It does melee by having lines appear in the air and you need to line up your sword with them to block enemy attacks, with some later enemies requiring you to duck off to the side to dodge attacks. It’s a roguelike so you fight through as many enemies you can, small stage by stage, until you die and spend the money you earned on new weapons and abilities.
• STAR WARS™: Squadrons (-40%, $23.99) As an experience, Squadrons is exactly what you expect. It’s really immersive and really feels like being in a star wars dogfight
• The Talos Principle VR (-60%, $15.99) Croteam are the devs of the classic Serious Sam series, and when the Vive came out they went all in and converted all their games over to VR, including their puzzle game Talos Principle. It was one of the higher quality experiences back then and it still holds up.
• Tales Of Glory (-40%, $17.99) First person medieval war RTS. It’s been in early access for a long time but the dev has put in a ton of work and made it a pretty unique experience with some of the best medieval combat outside Blade and Sorcery combined with strategy and base capture.
• Universe Sandbox (-33%, $19.99) Just got an update redoing the entire VR UI side of the game.
• Automata Break (-15%, $16.99) An asymmetric tower defense game you can play with a friend or alone.
• Skyrim VR (-67%, $19.79) Good port, works better than Fallout4VR with a big modding scene. This price is a bit higher than it has been in the past.
• Ragnarock (-15%, $16.99) Rhythm game where you beat the drums on a viking ship to metal and celtic rock. This seems like the best beat saber style game I’ve seen alongside Synth Riders, and the music is distinct.
• Industrial Petting (-15% $16.99) You farm alien pets to sell them back on earth. It’s an industrial production kind of game, with multiplayer support and VFlatscreen modes
• In Death (-50%, $14.99) Roguelike archery game set in Purgatory. Price feels a little steep when it stopped getting updates on PC in early 2019.
• Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs (-30%, $10.49) Basically Angry Birds in 3D. You can shoot in room scale and teleport to different spots to get a better angle. There's a fair amount of content too.
• Arizona Sunshine (-63%, $14.79) The first big co op zombie game. It shows it's age but it's still popular and has some DLC. I would recommend this one only on sale and mostly if you're planning on playing co op.
• L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files (-50%, $14.99) I think the cases are taken from the original game, but it's LA Noire in VR. There's driving, shooting, interrogations, looking for clues, everything from the original game. Seven cases.

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• Half-Life: Alyx (-25%, $44.99) The best looking VR game and one of the best games of this generation.
• Boneworks (20%, $23.99) This game is a must buy, but do not get it if you’re new. This is a game where pushing on a wall with your hand pushes the camera back. It will make you sick if you don’t have VR legs. The combat, melee, physics puzzles, are all extremely strong and it has an 11 hour campaign, along with arena, zombies, and sandbox modes. Another content update is also coming soon.
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners (-20%, $31.99) This is a great game. It’s less Left for Dead and more realistic in the sense that tension is very high and both humans and zombies are threats. There’s light crafting, upgrades, and collecting supplies, complete with physics and a faction systems and multiple paths to go down.
• Vacation Simulator (-20% $23.99) The best minigame collection game with the games integrated into three worlds with a lot to do, across multiple settings with progression and a basic story. Super immersive.
• No Man's Sky (-50%, $29.99) All new updates apply to VR too. Performance is spotty but the entire massive experience is carried over into VR, and there’s multiplayer too.
• Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades ($19.99) This game isn’t on sale but it’s getting an advent calender with daily updates until christmas. This is basically the ultimate “labor of love” game in VR. Detailed physics simulation of lots of guns, big recommendation for those with any interest in sandbox, has game modes like Take and Hold and Team Fortress, single player only.
• Pistol Whip (-20%, $19.99) This doesn’t go on sale as often. I would say it’s the first rhythm game that can actually go toe to toe with Beat Saber. It doesn’t have custom maps, but it gets regular content updates and just got a set of five campaign levels.
• Ultimate VR Stealth Bundle (-68%, $35.72) Budget Cuts 1, Budget Cuts 2, Unknightly, and Espire
• VTOL VR (-15% $25.49) This is the most advanced made for VR flight sim with full VR controls, tons of customization, and a bunch of modern fighter planes. It’s a community favorite and it’s even getting multiplayer soon.
• AGOS - A Game Of Space (-33%, $20.09) This got a super mixed reaction. It’s basically a third person satellite simulator. If you like the movement method you’ll like the game, otherwise you probably won’t. Watch some gameplay on youtube.
• Sairento (-35%, $19.79) This is like a ninja version of Superhot. I didn't enjoy it too much but many people like it. It has a lot of different weapons and you can do things like bounce off walls up to an enemy and cutting their head off with a katana.
• Gnomes & Goblins (-35%, $19.49) This got a mixed reaction. Basically it’s a game where you visit a community of gnomes and has two parts. In the first part you go on a little adventure meeting the gnomes and hanging out with them. But the rest of the game is doing activities and collecting artifacts around their town to fill your house.
• Disassembly VR (-30%, $20.99) Destruction and deconstruction physics sandbox simulator, just added melee combat.

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Also worth taking a look at, over at Fanatical they’re doing a “make your own bundle.” 2 games for $6.99, 3 games for $9.99, 5 games for $14.99

• Cosmic Trip - A very polished VR base capture RTS in first person where you build and manage drones and mine for crystals on an alien planet.
• Sprint Vector - Basically a footrace game you play by swinging your arms, set on an alien gameshow.
• Polybius - A trippy tunnel shooter with surreal pixel graphics, based on the haunted arcade game.
• Rainbow Reactor- Kind of like a sac toss arcade puzzle game.
• Conductor - An escape room style adventure game with a physics gun.
• Battlewake - This was a really hyped game that kind of flopped. Basically it looks really great graphically but the gameplay loop feels really repetitive and kind of shallow. For co op at this price it's a good buy.
• Raw Data - Early polished VR wave shooter, but it shows its age. It has multiplayer but the index support is pretty bad.
• Dungeons & Treasure VR - A small voxel fantasy roguelike with multiplayer support.

Part 1: Money for Nothing (1999)
Gimmick films are a part of cinema that have always fascinated me, and I’m sad that they’ve died out. Sure, 3D is still a thing, but we’ll never again have anything like William Castle’s The Tingler, whose “Percepto!” used vibrating seats to simulate the crawling of the titular parasite on the backs of the theater-goers as Vincent Price urged the audience to scream. We’ll never have another instance of Psycho’s policy of ‘No Late Admissions’ so that the twist of the film couldn’t be spoiled. I doubt that the new version of Clue that’s been in the works for years will give audiences the ability to choose their own ending. I’d kill for one movie to use Scratch-n-Sniff Cards.
One of the lesser-known gimmick films, something that’s truly considered forbidden cinema, is 1962’s The Maddening Quiet. Like The Tingler, it advertised itself with a gimmick, which called itself “The Silent Scream”; unlike that film, it was sold to theaters as not needing any special equipment to execute its gimmick. Its director, Laurence Forrester, actually took potshots at several of William Castle’s gimmicks in a marketing pitch for the film, saying:

Theaters that screen The Maddening Quiet do not need to distribute napkins with insurance policies written on them, or rig a skeleton to fly over the audience, or create a fire hazard with special seats. Rather, the score of the film, the sound, the dialog, shall do that all on itself… a blind man could sit in the theater and still scream in fear at the void upon the screen!

In another pitch, meant for smaller theaters, he says this:

The Maddening Quiet does not rely on cheap rubber suits with high-contrast zippers or makeup that suffocates the actors to deliver on its promise of fear. All of the horror is in the soundscape of the film-- with the help of the great Dr. Ludo Neptune, people will flee from the theater in droves!

On this point, he was a bit optimistic, but ultimately correct-- but something like this wouldn’t happen until thirty years after it was originally released. I watched it, and the following is going to be both a documentation of the plot, and the film’s effects on me.
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The worst crime any movie is to be boring, and The Maddening Quiet is anything but. Like a lot of films at the time, it features themes of transgressive science, hypnotism, and past lives. In it, Dr. Harold Neyman is attempting to bestow hearing upon a woman named Pearl Franklin, who has been deaf since birth, using “past-life regression hypnotherapy’; he reasons that since Pearl is deaf not due to damage to her ears but due to a defect in her brain, the hearing can be restored if she experiences a past life that is capable of hearing.
The session is where we first start to get trippy. The hair on the back of my arms stands up on end as Dr. Neyman walks her through the process, having her read his lips and hold her hand on a clock that ticks very loudly, so she can feel the vibration of it. I have a copy of the script, so I'll just transcribe what happens:

Dr. Neyman: Pearl, you are going into a deep sleep. When you go to sleep, you will awaken in the body of one of your past lives, one that is capable of hearing. When you awaken, you will bring back the sense of hearing with you, and you will be able to enjoy the world as the rest of us do. When you awaken, you shall once again be Pearl Franklin, with the ability to know what my voice sounds like. You will be Pearl Franklin when you awaken...

After that, the sound cuts out. We go into Pearl's mindscape, and see a woman that looks like her in Victorian-era clothing, who seems to be a singer in a music hall. Even in the black-and-white film, you can see she's very pale. She's singing on stage, but again, it's inaudible... except for a droning sound in the background, like hearing a jet fly overhead when you're half a mile underwater. It's not music, it can't be; the effects of it actually start to make me feel nauseous after about a minute, and gives me a headache.
Then, the singer collapses, and sound returns. The audience is heard murmuring in confusion, and she looks straight at the camera, saying:

Singer: I shall not go into the quiet. Not like this.

Pearl awakens, startled, with her hands over her ears; the ticking clock's volume is greatly amplified for a few seconds, producing a jumpscare that's enough to get my heart going. She can not only hear, but she can speak, sing, and even has better hearing than the characters who were born with it. How she knows how to speak English when she's never spoken a word in her life is glossed over through the power of reincarnation.
But there’s a problem-- Pearl’s got something following her, which manifests in a scene at a grocer in her small Midwestern town. For years, people have been talking about Pearl behind her back, and she has literally been unable to hear it. One of these is a man named Floyd, who for years has been shooting… ‘compliments’ at her. This is taken verbatim the script:

Floyd: Pearl’s a name that don’t suit her. I feel like she could be named Kitten. Let her out at night, bring her back in for some nice warm milk in the mornin’...

When Pearl overhears this, and other gems from him, rather than pretend to ignore it and play deaf, she turns on him and gives him both barrels-- or at least, I assume she does.
At this point, all audio cuts out from the film. It cuts between takes of Pearl yelling at Floyd and Floyd looking increasingly distressed. Then, it cuts between Floyd and an image of a gaping black void, while the sound of howling wind plays. Floyd falls dead of a heart attack when Pearl is finished yelling at him.
This was meant to be the first big scare of the film. Up until now, the film had basic B-Movie trappings; here, it does a 180. The whole scene is tough to sit through, even before the scare starts. Not to the degree of something like a Ruggero Deodata film, obviously, but we hear Floyd cat-calling her for over three minutes as the actress grows more and more uncomfortable. Some of the things he says aren’t even in the script; there’s one line he has about ‘buying a hot-dog cart’ that made my skin crawl. And then the void, the titular ‘Maddening Quiet’, hits.
There’s something about the lack of score, the eerie silence. At first you think the audio on your device has failed; in my case, I had to double-check the headphone jack on my computer. Then, as the tension builds in the scene, as Floyd grows more terrified and Pearl grows angrier, you feel like you’re glued to the seat. You feel like you’re standing in between a pair of passing trains, but there’s no wind, no sound; just the feeling of some vast, dangerous presence all around you.
When the Maddening Quiet actually appears, you had better be sitting down. Something about the sudden darkness, and the feeling of vastness, knocks you flat. I made the mistake of standing to check the settings on my monitor, and nearly got a sprained ankle for my trouble.
It’s at this point that I feel like I should make a distinction between a ‘forbidden’ piece of media and a ‘cursed’ one, as is defined by my research group; ‘forbidden’ media is an item that has completely explicable content, origins and effects on its audience, but is banned or purposefully lost, while ‘cursed’ media has one of those three elements that cannot be explained rationally. At this point, I wasn’t sure what I was dealing with. The film continues with Floyd’s body being carried out on a stretcher. After a short scene with a useless member of the town’s police, Pearl’s boyfriend Nelson comes to pick her up from the grocery store. He’s astounded to learn that Dr. Neyman’s treatment worked, and Pearl runs into his arms, overjoyed that she can hear his voice for the first time. He makes a joke about her no longer needing to read his lips, and she gives as good as she gets, replying with:

Pearl: I could hardly read them before, with how close they were to my eyes!

The film continues with a series of vignettes after this, where Pearl adjusts to a life of hearing. She’s startled to hear a car blaring its horn in the street, has to stop to marvel at birdsong, and is fascinated by a kitten mewling at her. She makes an odd comment when Nelson drops her off outside of her house:

Pearl: Honestly, it was a lot quieter than I thought it would be.
Nelson: What do you mean?
Pearl: The sun’s so big and bright… I expected it to be louder.

This whole time, though… I get a feeling of dread. The car horn makes me shiver. The birdsong feels like foghorns. My adrenaline spikes when Pearl pets the kitten, and my head whips over my shoulder, and I swear to god something is standing behind me, for the barest second.
I can tell the second big scare is coming when Pearl starts getting agitated at a barking dog owned by her rather nasty neighbor, Mr. Wolfe. I pause the video and take a moment to calm down, doing a bit of research on the film in the meantime.
Contrary to my expectations? It flopped on release. Critics complained of the audio cutting out at big scenes, which... It was meant to do? They said that the film is occupied entirely by a black, silent screen for five minutes around the climax (we’ll get to that in a bit) and they’re left wondering if the projectionist unspooled the film. It was only screened in a few theaters across the country, and in West Virginia, one critic said this:

The Maddening Quiet is a series of money-saving tactics barely supported by a charismatic series of actors-- I would not be surprised if the director ran out of money prior to shooting the climax, and simply cut to a black screen. Perhaps he intended to exposit the surely horrific events that happened to the townsfolk behind the screen, but was too besotted to do so.

Forrester was heartbroken by the reception. This was his first foray into cinema, after he had grown up watching Hammer Horror films. He genuinely thought he could make it, but he never filmed anything again. As for the “Dr. Ludo Neptune” who helped with the sound design... nobody of that name exists, obviously, but it was because of him that Forrester felt so convinced that a horror film could be carried on sound alone, and it flopped. Why?
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Back to the movie. Mr. Wolfe’s dog keeps barking at her, and Wolfe himself keeps yelling. The Maddening Quiet appears once again, with the sound cutting out. Wolfe clutches his head in pain, and his dog gets down, putting its hands over his ears. Once again, there’s no sound, but the presence of a vastness is there, right by my ears. For a moment, I feel a hand hold my arm to my side, but when I try to wiggle out of it, it's gone.
Then, a scream breaks the silence. I wrench my headphones from the computer as I stand, startled, and the black void appears. The scene cuts back to Wolfe on the porch, a gibbering mess. Pearl runs back inside and pretends nothing is wrong.
Dr. Neyman comes to check up on her that night, and mentions that Mr. Wolfe had an episode of some form, and was rushed to the hospital. His dog is heard howling in the background, as Neyman gives Pearl an examination, using the same trigger he used to end the hypnosis to make sure it's actually over. The characters in the scene-- Pearl, her mother, Dr. Neyman and Nelson-- all suddenly react as if a very loud noise has been played. Nothing comes through on my end, thankfully, but Dr. Neyman has to clap his hand to his ear; when it’s pulled away, he finds blood on his palm.
Pearl complains that she feels faint and goes to lie in bed. Dr. Neyman and Pearl’s mother converse as Nelson takes her up to bed.

Dr. Neyman: That noise-- did you hear it, or did you feel it?
Mother: I’m afraid I really can’t say, doctor. I felt like… like I was standing next to a tree that was falling over. Dr. Neyman: I need to do some more tests on her. Bring her to my office tomorrow, after Church.

Then we come to the Church scene. Pearl at first is afraid to cross into it, stunned by the volume of the organ music within. She explains that she’s used to feeling the music rather than hearing it, and it makes her feel unsteady. Nelson appears and offers to sit next to her and her mother on a pew; it’s implied that Nelson isn’t of the same denomination as them, and that his appearance here is unusual.
The dread I’ve been feeling for the last several scenes has died down, only to start back up when they start singing a hymn. Pearl stands to sing, and all eyes are on her by the time the hymn is finished; the pastor, Father Webb, stares at Pearl like she’s something straight out of hell.

Father Webb: God in Heaven, what manner of beast are you? Pearl: Not a beast, father. The treatment worked! I can hear perfectly. Father Webb: There is no surgery that can restore your hearing and make you understand me, child. What manner of devilry was committed on you?
Pearl: Why, Dr. Neyman hypnotized me! It’s an amazing thing, maybe you should-- Father Webb: How do I know you are the same Pearl Franklin that was in here the previous Sunday, and not some foul being using her form to speak? Mother: Now see hear[sic], Father Webb! My Pearl has been through a lot these last few days, and I shall not have you antagonizing her with your--

And then the audio cuts out again. Everyone around the church looks around, confused. There’s a shot of the organ player resting on the keys, trying to get them to work, and the pipes not producing any music. And like Pearl… I don’t hear the sound, but I feel it. The wind being forced out of the organ and rushing by my face, the vibration of stone as sound resonates off of it. Something rises in my throat, and I'm not sure if it's bile or a song.
Then, it's like an explosion goes off in my head; a deafening blast of nothingness that gives me a headache. For a moment, I’m convinced I’m deaf, blind, maybe even dead; I can’t even hear myself breathing. I can’t feel my arms. Then, it passes, and I’m in my seat, sweating bullets.
Before the Maddening Quiet can properly appear, Nelson puts his hand on Pearl’s shoulder. Her head snaps to him, and she leans into her boyfriend, crying. All around the church, people glare at her. They make themselves scarce quickly.
A lot of the film repeats this formula until the climax, so I’m going to gloss over them; at this point, I was just unplugging my headphones every time a scare came. About a day after the church Pearl makes an entire street experience the Quiet after nearly getting hit by a car, causing someone to crash their vehicle into a storefront. At another point, she’s arrested by that same useless police officer from earlier for breaking curfew with Nelson, and the Quiet causes him to sit stunned in his car, blaring his siren for what is later stated to be three hours, in the hopes that he can hear something again.
The climax takes place in Dr. Neyman’s office; Neyman has become convinced that one of Pearl’s past lives has overtaken her body, and that the Maddening Quiet is Pearl trying to communicate with people to tell them that she’s still alive. This is evidenced by the fact that Pearl, at several points, seems to forget Nelson’s name, despite them being together for several years. So, he aims to try to hypnotize her and drive out the past life possessing her.
But.. the Quiet, or Pearl, doesn’t want to go back into the body. There’s a feeling I got when I watched it, that whatever the Quiet was was… happy. It wanted to be out of a body that it considered broken and useless. It had been experiencing sound outside of Pearl’s body, and knew if it was ever driven back in, it would never be able to hear music or birdsong or anything like that ever again. I knew this, but the characters… didn’t. And I have no idea how I knew it.
Dr. Neyman starts his hypnosis. By this point, I’ve taken off my headphones and unplugged them again, electing to have subtitles on. But... I’m so unsettled that the five-minute black screen of nothing actually gets to me. I put the headphones back on about halfway through, because I have to know what’s happening.
There… there’s something talking in the darkness. I don’t know what it’s saying, but it’s mad. It doesn’t want to go back into Pearl. The Quiet likes being outside of Pearl. And it would rather tear apart everyone in the room before it becomes Pearl again.
When the darkness fades, all we see is Pearl, in repose. A sheet is draped over her as an inconsolable Nelson sits in the corner. A pair body are seen hanging from the ceiling in the next room; the coat and pants match Dr. Neyman’s. Nelson gives the closing lines of the film:

Nelson: Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe, now that she’s gone… she’ll be content with the quiet.

An ominous tone plays over the audio, almost like... well, a Silent Scream. I remove my headphones as the studio logo is shown, and finally realize how much of a wreck I am. At some point during the climax, I'd started crying, and my throat is sore and my face is wet. My eyes hurt, and my vision is blurry. My whole body is covered in sweat, and my cheeks feel warm. I put my fingers to my left ear; there’s a stream of blood trickling from it. I feel like I’m having a panic attack and a migraine at the same time. After a moment I just… kind of passed out in my seat. Woke up about an hour later as my phone rang; someone else in the community checking up on me.
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In 1992, as part of a 'retro' Film Festival, a theater in western Pennsylvania screened The Maddening Quiet. I won’t name the exact theater, but it was shown alongside classics like Them!, and The House on Haunted Hill, and dumpster fires such as The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. It was screened in a theater of ninety people, most of whom reported being ‘uncomfortable’ during the viewing. One forty-two-year-old woman said that ‘I hadn’t been that scared at a picture since that poor woman got cut down in a shower’.
When the climax, with its five minutes of solid black nothingness, came onto the screen, people began running out of the building. Barely two minutes in, the theater was empty; fearing that a fire had broken out, the manager had the whole building evacuated, spreading further panic among the crowd. In the end, there were twelve people injured in the crush, with one man having his hand broken so severely by people trampling on it that two fingers needed to be amputated.
After thirty years, Laurence Forrester’s movie had the intended effect. People were fleeing, likely due to the “Silent Scream!” gimmick. But what changed in those thirty years?
Someone in the research community, our audio specialist ‘Squirrel’, did some digging into the audio channels of the movie after hearing about my symptoms. Squirrel found that the audio track for the movie contained sounds that were of an inaudible frequency between 16 and 19 hertz-- something called ‘infrasound’. A few studies done into it show that it can cause fear responses in humans, trauma to the ears… it’s been attributed to be the cause of some ghost phenomena (which is bullshit, but that’s a story for another time). The sound couldn’t have been properly broadcast on speakers available in 1962, but by the 1990's, the technology had caught up to the medium.
I wondered how the hell they didn’t account for this, so I did some digging; as it turns out, director Laurence Forrester is still alive, eighty-two years young. I got into contact with his granddaughter, who arranged for communication between us via email exchange. He was flattered that I enjoyed the film despite its somewhat extreme effects, and had this to say when I asked him about who on earth “Ludo Neptune” was.

Neptune was an audio engineer out of New Jersey. Worked in some parks out on the shore, or so he said. Could make the most beautiful music with this weird little box of his-- he called it a ‘Magnaphone’. But, like you said, we couldn’t get them to play back on anything other than his own equipment, which he provided for the preview screening he gave us. Even then, the effects on us were nowhere near as bad as they were for you, or any other audience.

When I asked him where from New Jersey, he responded:

He said he was from around the Cape May area. I tried tracking him down back in 1966; he’s most likely dead by now, and I knew it was a pseudonym. Never found any trace of him.

I have a colleague called ‘Clark’ who’s looking into some phenomena around this particular part of NJ; I’ll have to get him to look into it.
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That’s all I have for now. I need to stock up on some gear (PPE is a bitch to find nowadays, but I need a mask that can block out mold) before I begin my writeup on the next one. Next time, I should be able to bring you details about Kitchen Blitz, a failed pilot for a 2013 home renovation show-- including a brief walkthrough of the location it was shot at.