If performing little psychologically shocking but ultimately harmless tricks was a career I’d be rolling in cash, I once tricked my sister into thinking dairy queen went bankrupt and closed down and was apparently so convincing that 10 years later she tried to argue with me about it while sitting inside a dairy queen
Good thing my second commandment was “Thou shalt be Volcel, sex is liberalism”
I’ve actually thought about this, and landed on this
1: Give myself stigmata 2: Hide the wounds while I hike up a mountain with a group of people (some of who I know, but most I don’t) 3: Once I get to the top, make a scene as if I had just been hit with the pain, spout some vaguely sermon-like sentences, get carried down the mountain, feign being baffled at the doctor’s office 4: “Confide” in members of the Catholic church until one of them believes me, try to fool the pope 4 a: if I successfully fool the pope, see how much money I can make before moving to step 5 4 b: If I fail to fool the pope, publicly denounce the Catholic Church and pivot my target audience to the people who don’t like the pope (did he recieve stigmata on a mountain?? I didn’t think so) 5: Make a big deal of donating all my accumulated possessions (see step 4 a) while using the proceeds to do things like feeding and housing the poor, start a new sect of Christianity that’s just communism in a trench coat
With this plan I’ll be dunking on the pope, siphoning money from evangelical chuds, funding communist revolution, AND spreading propaganda all at once
Aka: now your country is red! and Your country is red! and YOUR country is…
Iirc this was a big reason Bruce McArthur took so long to get caught, he targeted people from Toronto’s gay village. People from the area knew there was a serial killer targeting them, but the police actively denied that there was any reason to believe that until they caught him. They had questioned him 5 years prior in connection to one of his victims after he made a post online saying he had
killed and eaten a man from Toronto’s gay village around the same time a man from Toronto’s gay village went missing, but was let go, and another of his victims was a homeless man who was never reported missing in the first place.