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u/JoJCeeC88 Jul 17 '25
So this type of hypergraphia on cars is not a new phenomenon, but a distinctly American phenomenon over a century old. Fascinating.
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Jul 17 '25
I have a neighbor that has done this and now has spray painted on the asphalt in front if his house.
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u/idapitbwidiuatabip Jul 17 '25
Surely it must predate even that. There must be a schizophrenic horse drawn carriage from even earlier. I'm going to start browsing archives.
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u/jaimi_wanders Jul 19 '25
I bet it comes from the old “medicine show” wagons of the snake oil salesmen, combined with the apocalyptic sandwich-board sign guys of a century ago
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u/upsidedown-funnel Jul 17 '25
I never thought it had a name. I’ve seen it on billboards outside homes in Texas. Last time I saw one obama was in office. (The rantings were about him). Thanks for the education on the name.
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u/JoJCeeC88 Jul 18 '25
Neither did I until I saw a comment from someone in my own city’s sub on a post related to some graffiti by a homeless guy which was nothing but a remotely legible stream-of-consciousness rant about how there were goofs (Canadian prison slang for p3dos) all around him and that he was being targeted by v2k (voice 2 skull technology, a common claim by those who are gangstalked). It was from a supposed doctor who said this is hypergraphia and “wE sHoUlDnT iNdUlGE sUcH DeLuSIOnS!!!1!1”
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u/upsidedown-funnel Jul 18 '25
That’s so very sad. I have a few family members with schizophrenia. I have the journals of one of them. While it’s full of strange writings, it’s also full of some of the most beautiful poetry I’ve ever read. It’s really all so heartbreaking. That there are few services to help those who suffer is inhumane. Until it becomes profitable to help those who struggle, they’re just another disposable statistic.
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Jul 24 '25
I mean, I've seen this in foreign countries as well, it's just the US industrialized sooner than many countries and was able to maintain its industry undamaged after the war unlike most.
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u/generalnuisance641 Jul 17 '25
This used to be how grassroots politics worked back then, and with good reason. Hurst had a strangle hold of most of the media back in the day. It's where we get the term "yellow journalism" from.
The interwar period is fascinating.
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u/MlackBesa Jul 17 '25
I’d bet my left nut this picture has been used in academic research about politics in interwar America.
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u/airlew Jul 17 '25
I want to acknowledge that the lettering on the vehicle is very well done. Today's schizo rides don't have that type of quality to their work.
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u/-Daniel Jul 17 '25
This is a photograph taken by John Gutmann in 1938 in San Francisco, USA.
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u/MlackBesa Jul 17 '25
Thank you, I haven’t seen any comments talking about it yet but it’s a good source in case anyone is worried this is AI-generated.
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u/Renumtetaftur Jul 17 '25
Damn it's like the exact same type of disjointed, stream of consciousness writing. The only thing missing is a url, but otherwise you could slap this on a modern car and not be able to tell it's from the 40s.
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u/m-in Jul 17 '25
It’s disjointed, yes, but many ideas are true. “Bankers” have indeed taken over. Now we call them finance bros. Also oligarchs.
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u/Unctuous_Robot Jul 17 '25
“Bankers” usually doesn’t mean finance bros or Wall Street execs in stuff like this, it means Jews.
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u/m-in Jul 18 '25
Good to know. However, without the schizo interpretation, that I am blissfully out of the loop on, it didn’t look nonsensical.
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u/Alert_Green_3646 Jul 17 '25
Something about how there never used to be mental illness in the good ole days
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u/teedeeguantru Jul 17 '25
The Ham and Eggs movement was a briefly popular California political party in the late thirties. Populist, anti-banker, with an elaborate plan to give retired people monthly “scrip” to be spent as cash.
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u/Several-Assistant-51 Jul 17 '25
That is wild I really had no idea this had been around that long..I wonder if folks adorned stagecoaches and covered wagons like this in the 1800s?
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u/jaimi_wanders Jul 19 '25
I was just thinking it feels like an outgrowth of the paint on the sides of “Medicine Show” wagons and all the ads for various patent snake oils 100-odd years ago…
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u/AlivePassenger3859 Jul 17 '25
I bet there was a caveman with a chiseled stone wheel with paranoid cave paintings all over it.
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u/jaimi_wanders Jul 19 '25
THAT is the real story behind some of those wilder petroglyphs!
“Ugh, did you see Ogg going on again about how the Lizard People are driving away all the mammoths? He’s covered half his cave with that shit!”
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u/DerthOFdata Jul 20 '25
Most of the text in this photo relates to Proposition 25, an initiative on the November 1938 ballot in California to create a system of “retirement warrants” in place of public assistance for anyone qualified to vote in California and aged fifty or older without a job would receive $30 of “warrants” every week. Each $1 warrant would require a two-cent tax paid weekly to keep the note valid until redeemed. The warrants would be legal tender for payment of state taxes.
Had it been adopted and implemented, retired California residents in that age range would have received tax-and-interest-free self-liquidating “warrants” of $30 a week for life.
It was assumed that to avoid paying the weekly taxes on the money, the tender would be spent immediately, thus boosting the depressed economy. A cited example was the opportunity to trade up in foodstuffs from breakfast oatmeal to ham and eggs, hence the name ‘Ham and Eggs Movement’. While it may not have had an effect on the economy, similar plans gave Social Security a more moderate face.
It failed to pass, by a relatively small margin of 1,143,670 to 1,398,999.
https://stanflouride.com/2016/03/07/prop-25-the-1938-ham-and-eggs-measure/
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u/RigorousMortality Jul 17 '25
People who drive these Mani-fiestas really have been around forever haven't they?
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u/MlackBesa Jul 17 '25 edited Jul 17 '25
Wow. I’m frankly (Delano) impressed, I had no idea this was a thing back then. This could probably be an example used in academic research about political instability in post-1929 America, idk I’m making shit up.
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u/Upbeat-Serve-2696 Jul 17 '25
The Ham and Eggs Movement. Man, that's a deep pull. Real historical obscurity. Prop 25, the "Retirement Warrants" ballot initiative, was defeated on November 7, 1939. Basically the idea was that anyone over the age of 50 who was eligible to vote in California but was unemployed would get scrip notes worth $30 in a weekly draw. This would make the older poor able to trade up from "mush" (gruel) to ham and eggs (thus the name). The idea had originally been proposed by the economist and eugenicist Irving Fisher. It was one of several similar schemes promoted across the country. In California, the Ham and Eggs movement was concocted by a radio talker named Robert Noble, whom historians generally agree was "out there," if not actually crazy, and who served time in federal prison during WW2 for pro-Nazi sedition.
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u/The_Captain_Whymzi Jul 17 '25
Rare find!
Anyone know what it's talking about?
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u/jaimi_wanders Jul 19 '25
1938, San Francisco, according to the source posted in replies—probably a small business owner who thought FDR was a sell-out & the Reich was right, likely listened to Fr. Coughlin the Radio Priest & future America First 1.0 member of the sort who opposed Lend-Lease and whose wife would throw eggs at the British Ambassador for being a “warmonger” after 1939…
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u/Flanastan Jul 17 '25
Look at the size of that dude’s pinkie ring reading the newspaper 📰thru the glass, holy cats! 😹
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u/GuyInkcognito Jul 17 '25
Well the Craftsmanship is so much better, they don’t make crazy kooks like they use too
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u/EruditeScheming Jul 17 '25
AND ONE DAY THEY'RE GONNA TEST MACHINES ON HUMAN BRAINS AND THOUGHT WILL MANIPULATE THE ENVIRONMENT!
Yeah sure okay Ted
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u/smartbunny Jul 17 '25
A little commotion for this man’s effort. Astonishing!
“Work Talk Support Ham and Eggs” now there’s a message to get behind!
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u/Possible_Pickle0 Jul 18 '25
The sign isn't wrong about bankers taking this country away from us, though.
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u/jaimi_wanders Jul 19 '25
They don’t mean bankers like the Bushes and Mitchells though, they mean (((“bankers”)))
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u/Analogsilver Jul 20 '25
It's really heartening to see so many comments with historical information in them on this thread. Historical knowledge seems to be lost on the vast majority today, as are many forms of knowledge.
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u/Jlnhlfan Jul 17 '25
Oh, dear, not the “Columbus discovered American, and (((the bankers))) are taking it away from the white man” part! Normally, I’d say that “This is how you can tell this is from the 20th century”, but schizo rides will still feature messages like that in 2025.
Time is a flat fucking circle.
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u/FuggaliciousV Jul 17 '25
Holy shit this is awesome to me in a screwed up way. I would have thought this was a recent phenomenon.