Part 1: Wear Your Wearables, Eaters

You’ve likely already heard about RFK and the wearables. And that he’s granting access to wearable data, medical records, pharmacy data, and lab tests because wtf is causing all of this autism?!?!?

He wants you and every other American to be wearing a wearable yesterday. This should come as no surprise to anyone. Why? Because he fucking told you.

Which I wrote about here:

I Heard RFK is Playing 33-D Chess

Conspiracy Sarah

·

24 Apr

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And here:

Here’s What This MEANS

Conspiracy Sarah

·

9 May

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And here and here and here.

This is where I’ll ask you to bear with me. It’s one of those times where I see a long, twisted game…and it’s hard to lay out and explain.

Slow clap to the scorpions…your evil is impressive.

I have a background in applied behavior analysis, which I’ve mentioned previously. ABA is mostly associated with the “treatment” of autism. It is rooted in Skinner’s radical behaviorism and behavioral learning theory, based on operant conditioning. Operant Conditioning seeks to shape voluntary behaviors by the addition or removal of stimuli…if you do this (task), then you get that (reward).

My time in this field was interesting, however ultimately I found it to be reductionistic, hollow, manipulative, and dehumanizing. In my opinion, it is a moderately effective tool for training moderate compliance. This compliance is completely dependent on a reward/token economy, and little else.

A token economy is a system of contingency management based on the systematic reinforcement of target behavior. The reinforcers are symbols or tokens that can be exchanged for other reinforcers.

If you are interested in reading about the shortcomings and failures of the behavioristic approach, I highly recommend reading Alfie Kohn. His book, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes, does an excellent job illuminating the behavioristic (operant conditioning) inscription on almost every aspect of our social system, particularly schooling. In hindsight, my experience with ABA is largely responsible for my decision to homeschool my three boys.

It took less than three months of kindergarten for me to pull my oldest out of school forever. At his school the children’s names were placed on the yellow stripe of a rainbow at the beginning of each day. Over the course of the day their name would either move up toward green, blue, or purple because they had “good” behavior; or it would move down because of bad behavior to yellow, orange, or *gasp* RED. If they were really “good” they “earned” a sticker. If you have been reading this stack for any amount of time you can probably guess how much I loved this.

I tell you this story because it’s an excellent example of a pattern that is echoed throughout our culture. What is most intriguing is that it has been repeatedly shown (like over and over and over again) that using rewards to modify behavior, doesn’t work well.

“Drawing from hundreds of studies, Kohn demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives. Programs that use rewards to change people’s behavior are similarly ineffective over the long run. Promising goodies to children for good behavior can never produce anything more than temporary obedience. In fact, the more we use artificial inducements to motivate people, the more they lose interest in what we’re bribing them to do. Rewards turn play into work, and work into drudgery.” (source)

This may be as surprising to you as it was to the many researchers that have repeatedly drawn the same conclusions. It may also be surprising because this is largely the model that continues to be used in homes, schools, and the workplace. I could ramble on, but I’ll spare you the rant…what I would like for you to remember is:

• The token economy/reward system has been used for a long time and is how most of us were schooled.
• This model has been heavily studied and shown not to work very well.
• This info is readily available and not a secret.

Back to the wearables that RFK would like for everyone to be wearing. The ones that newly nominated Surgeon General Casey Means is selling. That you can use your pre theft tax dollars to buy through her brother Calley’s company. Calley also has a government role btw. Since we know conflicts of interest don’t matter I won’t go in to all the ways this situation is fucked.

I want to talk about the wearables. From my experience in the studio, I can tell you with certainty that they are marketed very specifically and very intentionally. I don’t really need to look at anything to confirm this because almost everyone in my studio wears some sort of biometric tracking device…and they fall neatly into personality/demographic categories.

For example, my clients that wear the Oura ring are Type A, organized, over achieving, perfectionists that tend toward anxiety. When I inquire about what they gain from wearing the ring they report, pretty much without fail, that they are able to go back and look at their data from the day and see that they were stressed at some point. They like it because it confirms their experience of stress.

Here is a screen shot from the Oura site:

People who wear the Whoop are usually athletic and tend to be fun, as in they also like to party. They report that the Whoop tells them if they’ve slept, and how well. If they had too much to drink the night before, the Whoop confirms that they haven’t recovered and feel like shit.

Here is a screen shot from that site:

People who wear the Apple Watch are rule followers. They are trying to get a certain number of steps in, close rings of achievement, and frequently get frustrated when they are partially into a workout and notice they have forgotten change their watch to Pilates. They report that they want to “get credit” for it. Most recently I noticed that people are now getting credit for standing up or even just standing.

Here is that site:

I have observed little to no change in my clients from wearing these devices. Some report taking more steps, but I have never had someone lose a significant amount of weight and disclose it happened when they started wearing a Fitbit….or that wearing their Oura ring led to lowering their blood pressure.

Let’s circle back to conditioning for a sec…

I think that what these devices purportedly do is provide reinforcement through feedback that should increase a behavior that is associated with being healthier. This can be looked at a couple of ways.

1. You don’t know that you are sitting too much, drinking too much, staying up too late, and not exercising…and if you know it, then you’ll change it.
2. Seeing your score, closing your ring, or meeting your goal provides you with a badge, a little hit of dopamine and that will reinforce your healthy behavior.

Knowing what I know about behaviorism, operant conditioning, and how adding a reward or simply the act of tracking progress is inversely correlated with intrinsic motivation and positive behavioral change…I wondered how much evidence we have that these wearables produce positive health outcomes. Seems like there must be substantial evidence if the secretary of HHS is going to allot large sums of money to advertise for them, right?

Science Says Fitness Trackers Don’t Work. Wear One Anyway

The first, a randomized controlled trial involving 800 test subjects, was conducted between June, 2013 and August, 2014. The results, which were published lastyear in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, found that, after one year of use, a clip-on activity tracker had no effect on test subjects’ overall health and fitness—even when it was combined with a financial incentive. (In a perverse twist, volunteers whose incentives were removed six months into the study fared worse, in the long run, than those who were never offered them at all.) The second, an RCT out of the University of Pittsburgh conducted between October 2010 and October 2012, examined whether combining a weight loss program with a fitness tracker, worn on the upper arm, could help test subjects lose more weight or improve their overall health. The results, published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed that subjects without fitness trackers lost more weight than their gadget-wearing counterparts—a difference of about eight pounds. And while it’s true that weight is not a great proxy for health, the findings also showed that the test subjects with fitness trackers were no more active or fit than those without.

All of which is, frankly, pretty embarrassing for companies that manufacture fitness devices—not to mention disquieting for the people who wear them.

Here is some evidence that wearables are ineffective tools for positively effecting health outcomes 👇

Jakicic et al. (2016). Effect of Wearable Technology Combined With a Lifestyle Intervention on Long-term Weight Loss: The IDEA Randomized Clinical Trial.

This RCT found that adding a wearable device to a lifestyle intervention did not result in greater weight loss compared to standard behavioral interventions over 24 months. In fact, the wearable group lost less weight (mean 2.4 kg vs. 5.9 kg in the control group).

Finkelstein et al. (2016). Effectiveness of Activity Trackers With and Without Incentives to Increase Physical Activity (TRIPPA): A Randomized Controlled Trial.

This Singapore-based RCT showed that wearable activity trackers, with or without incentives, did not significantly increase physical activity levels or improve health outcomes like aerobic capacity or quality of life over 12 months.

Cheatham et al. (2018). The Effects of Wearable Fitness Devices on Physical Activity and Weight Loss in College Women.

This study showed that wearable fitness devices did not significantly increase physical activity or lead to weight loss in college women compared to controls, highlighting limited effectiveness without additional behavioral support. In the subgroup analyses, wearable trackers demonstrated no clear benefit for physical activity or weight reduction.

Effect of commercial wearables and digital behaviour change resources on the physical activity of adolescents attending schools in socio-economically disadvantaged areas: the RAW-PA cluster-randomised controlled trial

Effectiveness of activity trackers with and without incentives to increase physical activity (TRIPPA): a randomised controlled trial

Fitbit Use and Activity Levels From Intervention to 2 Years After: Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Controlled Trial

Wearable Activity Tracker-Based Interventions for Physical Activity, Body Composition, and Physical Function Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

The Impact of Wearable Motion Sensing Technologies on Physical Activity: A Systematic Review [Internet].

Now let me ask you…

Do you think these huge wearable companies have ever heard of operant conditioning? Do you think our government has ever studied human behavior and conditioning? Do you think they know that this is a terrible model to use if the goal is to Make America Healthy Again???? Of course we already know that they don’t actually want to make America healthy because they are still recommending regular poison injections.

If the wearables aren’t making people fitter, slimmer, or generally healthier, what are they doing and why do they want everyone wearing one? Obviously they are tracking, a stated goal of our scorpion government…but they are also conditioning people to wear their tracking tags fitness reminders. And all of YOUR data that the wearable is collecting is being amassed by the government under a thinly veiled guise of solving autism. Let me say that again in bold and by itself.

The government is amassing ALL of the biometric data that people are willing to give…to solve the autism “mystery”.

Y’all. This is NOT about autism. This is about surveillance and compliance.

The behavior of wearing a wearable is being conditioned.

Have you ever worn a ring or a watch and been so accustomed to wearing it that you feel naked without it? ←That is conditioning

What about a seatbelt? ← Conditioning.

And now we see that wearables are moving toward being in the body vs on the body with the continuous glucose monitors that are now widely available. Do you think it will be easier or harder to get someone who is used to wearing an Oura ring to plug a CGM into their arm?

And, here’s the kicker… while they are conditioning the behavior of wearing a device, they are actually making people less likely to become fit or maintain their fitness. 🤯

SCORE for the SCORpions! People get used to having a wearable on them at all times, checking it, updating it, etc…but they actually don’t get healthier. PERFECT. Because people who are less healthy need more interventions like pharmaceuticals and supplements. And I GUARANTEE that they’ll be selling blood tests for hormones and vitamin levels, etc. If the wearables aren’t selling these yet, I’m sure they will be soon. Hormones are all the rage right now, but that’s a topic for another time. I’m not even going to look into any of that because I’ve only scratched the surface of what I want to talk about today.

https://conspiracysarah.substack.com/p/rfk-wearables-are-a-key-to-the-maha