I’m no psychologist, but I still try to understand the motives behind internet crackpots (as I mock them), such as Frank Hoover.
In a nutshell, there’s a few crappy-res pix of Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, in a bathroom with a couple of young ladies. Nothing overly salacious, as everybody is fully clothed. It just looks like Jerry is partying with a couple of PYTs and they Twittered it.
But this Hoover guy sent JJ a manifesto explaining that he’s actually been trying to protect the Cowboys Grand Poobah from extortion by preventing some gangstah named 24K from releasing the incriminating pics. Apparently, he thinks 24K’s phone acts as the controlling server for all released content having to do with Jerry Jones.
But it just gets weirder. He starts tying in numerical coincidences from pi, dates of astronomy events, and gold (because the US stopped backing cash with gold and gold is one of the gifts baby Jesus got from the Wise Men). He thinks all these are signs from God to help Jones.
Par exemplar:
● Triple Shadow Transit on Jupiter, October 12 2013: A day before Jerry’s
birthday. This is repeated on June 3, 2014 (my father Frank W. Hoover’s birthday)
and on January 24, 2015 (Gold from the Bible…this is the day the Gold Rush started in San Francisco in 1848.
This is for a pic of Jupiter with three shadow dots that are simulated.
And it doesn’t stop there! His Twitter page is chockablock full of pictures of ticket stubs and license plates that share a few digits with pi. Pi’s numerical expression is infinite. There’s bound to be number chains in there that match my phone number, date of birth, or number chains chosen totally at random.
So what inspired this insane brain train of thought? Guilt from making Apple TV apps drug dealers and pimps buy? (Apple’s from the Garden of Eden, the original sin, after all) Frustration from Tony Romo not being fired? (Romo was born 4/21/1980, the same day Rosie Ruiz faked her run in the Boston Marathon, and 4/21 corresponds to DT in the alphabet, which stands for Delirium Tremens)
I remember from Cosmos that Neil deGrasse Tyson said that the primary strength of humans was the ability to recognize patterns. Our ancestors went by the positions of the stars for navigational purposes and planting/harvesting their crop. Hoover seems to be taking this to heart a little bit too much. But at least it keeps him busy. Until the AT&T Stadium implodes or something.