[And I suspect it's to make Pokemon seem larger than it is]

I see it all the time. Movie threads. Listicles. Diagrams. Gaming articles. Gemini. It’s always the same.

“Pokemon is the largest IP in the world!”

Which everyone loves to trumpet about – that this IP has dominated the charts in a way that no other IP on the planet ever has.

Except that’s a lie. You have been lied to.\*

Pokemon is almost certainly not the largest IP on the planet and every single source out there on the internet is quoting either a)nothing at all or b)the same Wikipedia page with the world’s worst comparative sourcing.

Where do we even start? The offending article in question then.

Let’s take a look at merchandizing, by far Pokemon’s bulk of revenue.

If we follow [b], it brings us to the source for 2026 numbers, [25].

https://www.licenseglobal.com/rankings-lists/top-150-leading-licensors

The ultimate source for these numbers is “License Global Magazine”(LGM). And what do these 2026 numbers say?

hey’re number 6, with a mere 24.9% that of Disney. Why wouldn’t Disney IPs get counted for this? Well, Disney doesn’t break it out on a per-IP basis. But already we can see the issues; using a source which *only* counts revenue for one IP is immediately, obviously a wrong way to get a comparison \across** IPs. As the Boondocks put it, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

So what do Disney IPs use as a source of revenue for 2026 numbers? The Wikipedia article doesn’t have a source for Disney and doesn’t count merch sales past 2018. Are we then to believe that, say, Disney Princesses, the 5^th largest IP out there, constitutes none of that $63B and hasn’t since 2018? According to Wikipedia, this is exactly how it’s done.

Yes, per wikipedia, since 2018, not a single one of the merchandize counts for Disney Princesses, Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, Spider-Man, MCU, Avengers have been updated. Not a single update across all of those brands, despite their parent company generating hundreds of billions in merchandizing revenue, per the same source that Pokemon uses to place up the rankings. Are we then to believe that it’s some other mysterious Disney property which is racking up all of this merchandising? Somehow, only Pokemon gets merchandizing revenue, and all other revenue simply counted as Disney…vanishes. Goes to no IP. The parent company is producing $63B in merchandizing revenue which is attributable to no one.

This approach is so, so, so obviously absolute nonsense. Clearly, just because you can find numbers for one doesn’t mean that numbers for the others don’t exist. Let’s start with Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse, which – again – has not updated their merchandizing counter since 2018, hasn’t grown at all?

What about for the fact that Mickey Mouse made more money in merchandizing in 2018 than Pokemon did?

Yup. This Disney IP – the one without big movies, or big stars, or big games – made more money via merchandizing in 2018 than Pokemon did. In fact, Mickey made more money in merchandise than Pokemon did in 2018, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2010 (by a 3.6x multiple). Somehow amidst all that though, Mickey sold 0 in 2009, 2008, and 2006 – very embarrassing for him.

Mickey himself beats Pokemon on a merchandise basis 8 times out of 9 for years we can actually compare, with only a *single year*(2017) being smaller than Pokemon on a like-to-like basis, and even then by a mere 0.267M. Meanwhile, Mickey routinely generates $1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6B more in merch revenues! Even in just these fragmented years, even including the missing years and the gigantic, improper, and incomparable chunk of “until 2005”, Mickey made $9.186B *more\* than Pokemon in merch sales – $60.67B vs $51.48B. If we only look at like-to-like years(‘07, ‘10-‘18) we can directly compare, Mickey made *$22.54B* more than Pokemon.

Yet somehow, Mickey merch sales end flatly at 2018. Not only that, but apparently he didn’t sell anything at all before 2002, whereas Pokemon gets a great big chunk of “before 2005” revenue. Sure. This article is claiming that Mickey Mouse, the globally recognized IP which has existed for ninety eight years, through the toy crazes of the 60s, 70s, and 80s – before Pokemon ever existed -  only started to make any merchandizing sales in 2002. This article is claiming that all of a sudden, in 2002, this otherwise apparently-no-sales IP suddenly generates $4.7B in merchandise sales, hit banger after banger until 2018, and vanished into the sunset. Somehow, this phenomenon didn’t happen to Pokemon.

Are you kidding me? Is this Wikipedia page insane?

If we dig deeper we can see even more issues. Let’s check 2018 for both of those, so [18] for Pokemon and [43] for Mickey.

[18] https://web.archive.org/web/20210613084512/https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/disney-repeats-as-top-global-licensor-547b-retail-sales-1229916/

[18] is an article titled: “Disney Consumer Products Hits $54.7B in Retail Sales as Top Global Licensor of 2018”. In it, we see no revenue for Mickey Mouse, although it does call out

Beyond that fun footnote(23d place!) though, nothing about Mickey. Once again, zero basis for comparison; once again, something to suggest Pokemon is absolutely nowhere near the top.

[43] https://archive.org/details/retail-sales-of-licensed-merchandise-based-on-100-mm-entertainment-character-pro/mode/2up

[43] is much more helpful, which might be why so many characters have their merch sales only up to this point. This is a PDF titled “Retail Sales of Licensed Merchandise Based on $100MM+ Entertainment/Character Properties”. *Finally*, we see IP fully broken out, with Mickey right there at #1 at $3.265B…and Pokemon at #25 with $0.497B!?

This could be a lot of things. [18] draws from LGM, which is a big-picture industry magazine resource, better for marketing, brand launches, and category reports for people inside and outside the industry. [43] is “The Licensing Letter”(TLL), which has a much deeper dataset, much deeper analysis on deals and royalties, and is used by people in the industry for actual specific coverage.

 [43/TLL] says their number excludes content:

Oh huh so everything else drawing from TLL excludes video-games. Yet [18/LGM] very much includes video-games. If you make an account there and go to the actual 2018 TLM report (which, crucially, is for 2017 data; 2018 actuals released in 2019 are not available on the site anymore) it says this about Pokemon:

Look like it includes video games in this discussion, which is weird, as Pokemon very much *also* counts video-game (specifically mobile) games as a separate part of their total, so this is getting double counted in their merchandise metrics:

Whoever did this shoddy Wikipedia article is drawing from a less precise dataset(LGM vs TLL), is *including* sources which other IPs are excluded from(like video games), and then *double-counts* it. This isn’t even getting into whether to count theme parks and cruises (where Disney/Mickey has an absolutely colossal retail presence).

So never mind that Marvel is scattered across a million listings like Spider-Man, X-Men, MCU, Thor, Iron Man. Never mind that the *single* X-Men merchandise number is from 1994 without any updates in the last 32 years:

Referencing this article:

Never mind that hey wait a minute, that’s not just X-Men!

These sources are a joke. This list is the least reliable source I could have possibly even conceived, much less have actually put together. Pokemon uniquely counts spans of time which other brands do not, actual 1:1 comparisons are essentially non-existent, and not a single real primary 1:1 source anywhere has Pokemon anything at #1.

The talk page has been filled with people noting this over the years - with several noting that it seems suspiciously targeted to make Pokemon seem bigger than it comparatively is.

And still, articles (and AI about those articles!) about Pokemon being the biggest keep referencing either nothing at all or this absolute garbage fire.

Beyond Wikipedia and occasional lucky call out to LGM, not a single one of these awful, awful, awful articles has any sourcing of any kind besides literally "trust me bro". This includes Guinness, a marketing company which has no ability to get any more industry insight than any other web-bound layperson and which uses "estimated" and "thought to have" more than an actual quantiative comparison demands.

If I'm to give the Wikipedia article any credit at all (kill me), at least it draws from actual industry-caliber accounting, not grainy-ass self-made diagrams or obama-giving-himself-a-medal caliber nonsense. Of course, the Wikipedia article is pure trash, but at least it leads somewhere.

So, at the end of this? No sir I don't like it. Not for one single shining second do I believe that Pokemon is the biggest IP in the world.

TLDR: It's almost certainly not the largest IP. The sources are complete garbage; there's fragmenting all over the place; there's double-counting; there's talk that this was done intentionally but it's too enmeshed to clean up fully; nothing else has any sources at all; other IP consistently has much more presence

\Lastly, I know I've come in hot here.* Maybe it is Pokemon. If it is, there isn't a single actual industry source out there which supports it, just fan reposts, poorly sourced citogenesis articles, and this unbelievably bad Wiki article. But maybe? In my eyes though, Pokemon is almost certainly not the largest IP in the world. What is? It’s hard to say – Disney doesn’t split up by IP. My guess is Mickey Mouse. Perhaps Marvel. But all these breathless proclamations about Pokémon at the undisputed top? Absolutely not.

Think about it.

The French have spent centuries treating their language like a sacred artifact. The Académie Française exists specifically to protect French from “pollution.” They invent official replacements for every English tech word (courriel, logiciel, etc.). They’re extremely proud of how elegant and precise French is supposed to be.

Then along comes the most culturally dominant AI product of the decade and they call it… **ChatGPT**.

In French, “j’ai pété” literally means “I farted.”

So every single time a French person says the name of the tool out loud, they are forced to announce that they just farted.

This cannot be a coincidence. Sam Altman is not that careless with branding. They could have called it ChatAI, OpenChat, Athena, Hermes, literally anything else. Instead they chose the one combination of syllables that forces the most linguistically proud nation on Earth to repeatedly say “I farted” in polite company.

Still think it's just a coincidence? That one language was just an oversight? Consider this: French is the 4th most widely spoken language in the world!

It’s not about the technology. It’s a precision strike against French linguistic arrogance, executed with surgical cruelty and zero actual stakes.

That’s the conspiracy.

Supermarkets are about to get their huge deliveries of Christmas stock. Before they re-merchandise, they need slow-selling food cleared away. Perhaps a lobbying group called in a favour.

The theory that the Earth is Round was made up by big globes to sell more globes and the theory of flat Earth was made up to sell more maps. In reality they are both wrong, we live on a dinosaur shaped Earth

nobody ever would have looked at a normal shoe and thought "you know what this needs? individual holes for every toe"

somebody just wanted to see the exact outline of people's toes in public, and then came up with some bullshit about "natural movement" and "foot health" to make it socially acceptable

McDonald's for years was seen more as the go to restaurant for suburbs and country towns, not necessarily urban cosmopolitan areas and lifestyle centers, despite its massive corporate global footprint

But I believe McDonald's wanted to expand beyond the same usual nooks and crannies in most towns and rural areas and wanted to be taken more seriously by commercial real estate and urban developers around this time

So why one of the few legible ways to this to sanitize the imagery usually associated with your interior design and overall corporare iconography

And boom! It worked.

Because notice also McDonald's only expanded its commercial footprint around more public areas and commercial supercenters

Before then McDonald's tried to remain localized towards more generic highway strips and suburban cutaways that are nearby parks, schools, community clinics, grocery stores and small strip malls as a way to blend in better with its sorrounding commercial ecology to protect its public relations [PR] outlook

Now they did it better with the 2013 re-design and were now more able to expand towards lifestyle centers, power centers, business towns, tech hubs and even government facilities

Notice too that location placements of most new construction locations since 2013, ain't that crazy?

I believe it's due to botox injections, likely around his upper lip/cheek/nasolabial folds.

FIRST OF ALL, what makes his smile look so lifeless ?

I believe it's the fact his lower eyelids don't close, but ALSO that some of his facial muscles don't push his cheekbones as high as a normal smile would.

Look at this older picture of MrBeast smiling :

His smile looks a lot more normal in this picture. Notice how his nasolabial folds are a lot deeper, his nose appears to be more scrunched up, his eyelids are closing further and his cheekbones seem to "bunch up" ? This is all signs of a normal human smile.

As the above picture suggests, the muscles that make up your smile are :

- Zygomaticus major (pulls your mouth muscles back for a wider smile)

- Zygomaticus minor (pulls your upper lip upward)

- Orbicularis oculi (makes your eyes close)

- Orbicularis oris (pulls your upper lip upward)

- Levator anguli oris (raises angle of your mouth)

(Also potentially, levator labii superioris muscle and nasalis muscle, idk wherever i looked the muscles were different)

I believe the reason why his smile looks so lifeless is he's mostly overcompensating by using his zygomaticus major to smile because one of the muscles that pull his lips up do not work properly (due to botox).

For those who don't know, botox is the injection of a neurotoxin (botulic toxin) in order to paralyze muscles voluntarily. It can be used for both medical or cosmetic purposes and to my knowledge is mostly done on facial muscles.

I believe Jimmy has had botox done for either a potential gummy smile, or to soften his nasolabial folds. It would likely track with his other oral procedure (his veneers, which i believe are a banned topic on his channel).

Botox for gummy smile would affect the zygomatic minor and levator labii superioris, which sort of tracks with my previous hypothesis on why his smile looks lifeless.

Botox for his nasolabial folds would mainly affect his levator labii superiori muscle.

IN CONCLUSION :

I believe MrBeast has had botox, primarily in his nasolabial fold area (most likely in the levator labii superiori muscle, though could be in a multitude of muscles) which could explain why his smile is so famously lifeless

We always think of aliens as being from some advanced civilization. But they are as sucky and incompentent as humans are, and the reason society sucks is because the alien rulers are bad at it, phoning it in, or outright unqualified.

Infuriating how much remains in this body wash bottle after you can no longer pump any more product.

Low steaks conspiracy

I think that because of our lowered socialization during quarantine we relied mostly on media, both social and artistic for methods of socializing and entertainment, and since AI is built off of social media and written media, it would make sense that it talks like it too. So I think the reason so many people initially thought it felt so real was because their standard for what human interaction is like had dropped, and without the covid quarantine it wouldn’t be anywhere near as popular.

In the song "I Can Change," James Murphy used a warbling lead synth sound to make us all think of Halloween and costumes and candies while tying it to our love of falling in love to further Big Halloween's aims.

They were never for AI. Nobody believed in AI from the start, it was just a distraction. They just needed a huge amount of datacenters, because with current technology they need this much to upload even one Mark Zuckerberg.

I see drinks, shakes, sodas, candy advertisements and products fucking EVERYWHERE for trolli. Even popsicles. What is this? Are they targeting me to buy their gummy worms? Does everyone else see this? I swear I've seen an advertisement in reference to or selling these gummy worms several times a god damn day. Are they putting something in these gummy worms to drug or influence the masses? Please tell me I'm not going insane. 😭

I only knew about Forgotten Island because of a Dazz Reviews video, and his reaction to it. Otherwise, I would have no clue, unless I actually went to the cinema and saw the giant screen (that occasionally plays non-marvel movies) playing the trailer for this movie.

Apparently the movie is genuinely good too, which only adds to the theory. Studios don’t want people watching original movies, and instead want them watching the remake slop like Snow White, and will turn the blame on us when nobody comes to see Forgotten Island, because it was a forgotten movie.

But that’s just a theory. A movie theory.

I'm not sure what they are or what they are doing but feels like something is going on I'm being hidden from. Edit I ment man made satellites

My mom wanted me to edit two photos together in canva so she could post them on Facebook.

I worked on my moms photos in canva for an hour with her hovering over me and giving feedback and she hated ever change I made.

Finally we gave up, and later (like 10 min) she came up to me saying she put it into chatgpt and it was exactly what she wanted.

AI IS REPLACING DAUGHTERS!!! Is it not the right of every child to be forced to help your parents do photo to video editing for Facebook? Is it not the right of every child to be annoyed by how out-of-touch they are????

I got passed the buck by my brother to help my mother and AI HAS STOLEN THAT RIGHT FROM ME!!!!

DOWN WITH AI!!!! HUMAN DAUGHTERS ONLY!!!!!

note. I am not threatened by cat or dog daughters, they cannot use canva.