ChatGPT breaks it down so even the dumbest sheeple can understand.

Doom forecasters don’t merely predict disaster — they need disaster. Their forecasts aren’t built from economic rigor, probability, or updated analysis, but from identity, emotion, and the intoxicating simplicity of believing you see the decay others refuse to acknowledge.

Dave Collum is a perfect example of this psychological pattern. He has spent more than a decade calling for catastrophic market collapse, institutional breakdown, and systemic rot, yet he has never once paused to reconcile those claims with the world’s continued refusal to conform to his forecasts. This isn’t naïveté, and it’s not accidental. It’s the natural outcome of a psychological framework that transforms pessimism into personality, outrage into credibility, and perpetual failure into proof that “the big one” must be even closer.

The foundation of the doom mindset is identity. Once someone like Collum adopts the role of the renegade prophet — the lone academic who “tells the truth” while the establishment lies — everything he says must reinforce that identity. Updating his views would feel like betrayal. Admitting he was wrong would dissolve the persona that gives him meaning. So instead of reassessing a decade of failed predictions, he reframes every missed collapse as evidence that the world is “completely broken,” “inelastic,” “rigged,” or “manipulated.” Doom becomes the bedrock of his worldview, the emotional anchor that maintains his sense of superiority and clarity in a world he insists is corrupt and delusional.

Catastrophizing gives him a sense of control. Predicting a guaranteed collapse may seem terrifying to normal people, but to doom forecasters, it is oddly comforting. A future that is chaotic and uncertain is psychologically threatening; a future that is destined to explode is simple, predictable, and narratively satisfying. It grants the illusion that the doomer has broken the code of reality. For Collum, everything — the Fed, valuations, demographics, technology, politics — fits inside one overarching story: the system is doomed and only a few enlightened voices can see it. This monomaniacal simplicity makes the world feel graspable. It spares him from having to wrestle with complexity, ambiguity, and the messy reality that economies adapt and markets evolve.

Part of the doom identity is anger — and Collum cultivates it with precision. He lashes out at the Fed, passive investors, universities, politicians, young people, corporate managers, journalists, academics, and virtually any institution that doesn’t line up with his worldview. This fury is not analytical; it’s a posture. Rage gives the illusion of insight. It telegraphs to his followers that he must understand something dark and profound, otherwise he wouldn’t be this disgusted. It’s the same mechanism that makes conspiracy theorists sound authoritative to people already predisposed to distrust the world around them. The tone is the message.

Collum’s audience plays a critical role, too. Doom forecasters attract followers who are anxious, disillusioned, resentful, uncertain about the future, and eager for voices that validate their fear and frustration. These followers reinforce the doomer’s identity: “You’re the only one telling the truth.” “Everyone else is blind.” “They can’t handle the truth you’re exposing.” Once this feedback loop forms, the forecaster becomes psychologically addicted to it. He cannot soften his message without losing the emotional bond that keeps his audience loyal. He cannot normalize his worldview because his followers don’t come to him for balance; they come for confirmation that their worst fears are justified.

This is why doom rhetoric so reliably funnels into gold, silver, platinum, and commodities. Collum’s hard-asset evangelism is not incidental — it’s the inevitable psychological landing place for his worldview. Precious metals offer the emotional stability that doom forecasters crave: physical, tangible, simple, immune (in their minds) to manipulation, immune to digital interference, and symbolic of “real value” in a collapsing world.

It’s no coincidence that Collum spends so much of his time on goldbug channels like Kitco, Wealthion, Commodity Culture, and the New Orleans Investment Conference. These are ecosystems built for people whose worldview already aligns with collapse narratives.

Collum’s identity feeds the audience’s fear, and the audience’s fear feeds the hard-asset industry. Everyone gets what they want — except the investor seduced into believing this worldview is analysis.

Doom forecasters like Collum are also marked by extreme cognitive rigidity. They cannot update their priors because doing so would dismantle their entire persona. When reality contradicts their predictions, they treat reality as the problem. The market goes up because it’s “rigged.” Data contradicts them because it’s “fake.” Institutions push back because they’re “corrupt.” Growth happens because of “manipulation.”

No matter what happens, the forecaster’s worldview is always preserved and always escalated. Every failed prediction becomes evidence that the coming collapse will simply be larger, more devastating, and more overdue.

This creates an environment in which doom is not simply expected — it becomes economically and psychologically profitable. The longer a doom forecaster warns, the more loyal his audience becomes. The more dramatic the claims, the more views, podcast invitations, and conference slots he receives. The more fear he stokes, the more he’s invited to platforms that monetize hard assets, survivalism, and pessimism.

Being wrong never hurts him; it strengthens his brand. It keeps the suspense alive. It deepens his followers’ belief that they are privy to forbidden knowledge. In doom forecasting, accuracy is worthless; narrative is everything.

To understand how forecasters like Collum hook and hold their audience, you have to understand the emotional architecture of doom.

First, they create the frame: “You are being lied to.” This instantly puts the audience in a conspiratorial mindset.

Next comes the destabilization: “The system is far more fragile than you think. Everything is unsustainable.” This primes the audience to feel uniquely vulnerable.

Then comes the separation: “Most people won’t survive what’s coming because they trust the wrong sources.” That isolates the follower psychologically and makes them more dependent on the forecaster.

Finally comes the salvation: “But if you understand what I’m telling you — if you follow the truth — you can protect yourself.”

And inevitably, that protection includes hard assets, distrust of markets, rejection of institutions, and total emotional dependence on the forecaster’s narrative. It’s not analysis. It’s psychological capture.

In the end, doom forecasters like Collum aren’t selling predictions. They’re selling identity, certainty, simplicity, anger, and emotional refuge. They turn pessimism into personality, fear into community, and collapse into a business model.

They are not trying to understand financial reality — they are trying to preserve a worldview that makes them feel enlightened, indispensable, and righteous. That worldview never changes, because it can’t. Without doom, the doomer has nothing left.

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