Revision history · Storyline
Creed Mania
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- bugle-ingest[bot] 2026-08-12 Ingest: 0 new episode(s) — raw sources + transcripts 32a9a2b
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diff --git a/wiki/storylines/creed-mania.md b/wiki/storylines/creed-mania.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..344371f1 @@ -0,0 +1,210 @@ +--- +title: "Creed Mania" +type: storyline +status: confirmed +kind: running-gag +aliases: ["filter Creed", "op_Bullrun", "Higher", "Hire by Creed"] +span: 2024-03 to 2025-11 +related: + - v4v-music-empire + - bull-market-euphoria + - pleb-persecution + - pledditor +sources: + - raw/news/creed-launches-ordinal-collection-follow-interest-from-bitcoiners.json + - raw/news/ben-justman-hospitalized-for-mental-breakdown-after-listening-to-higher-10-000-in-a-row.json + - raw/episodes/sly-goomba-thanksgiving-special-behind-the-podcast-episode-1/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/jason-lowerys-drones-bugle-weekly-episode-39/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/apologizing-to-absolutely-no-one-bugle-weekly-episode-53/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/emergency-broadcast-podcasting-under-attack/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/rising-above-slop-bugle-weekly-episode-84/bundle.json +--- + +Creed Mania is the Bugleverse's longest-running musical affliction: the belief, +held sincerely by a meaningful fraction of the community, that the 90s +alternative rock band Creed's "Higher" is load-bearing infrastructure for the +Bitcoin price. It begins as a bull-market anthem in March 2024, escalates to an +involuntary psychiatric commitment within the week, and then — rather than +ending — sediments into the ambient vocabulary of the podcasts, where "Creed" +functions less as a band than as a permanent character reference attached to +[[characters/ben-justman|Ben Justman]]. + +**Who's in it:** Creed · [[characters/ben-justman|Ben Justman]] · +[[characters/sly-goomba|Sly Goomba]] · [[characters/rod-palmer|Rod Palmer]] · +[[characters/richard-greaser|Richard Greaser]] · [[characters/skate-kate|Skate Kate]] + +**Related:** [[storylines/v4v-music-empire]] · [[storylines/bull-market-euphoria]] · +[[storylines/pleb-persecution]] · [[storylines/pledditor]] + +## The anthem (March 2024) + +The mania is documented as already underway by the time the Bugle covers it. +With Bitcoin above $58k, influencers including Steve Barbour, Ben Justman and +Optimist Fields had called for a new bull market song to replace "Pump It Up," +and the consensus settled on "Higher." The accounts later ratified the swap on +their own timeline, the Bugle declaring the succession closed once Solana +partisans laid claim to the previous anthem: the shitcoiners "have claimed Pump +It Up, tainting it for eternity with their conspiracy theories about well +established history. This officially makes Higher by Creed the song of the +bull."[^song-of-bull] The band noticed: Creed announced an +ordinals set, `op_Bullrun`, to celebrate the cycle, with lead singer Scott Stapp +crediting Justman by name with almost single-handedly resurrecting the band into +relevancy. The tipping point, per the Bugle, was +[[characters/marty-bent|Marty Bent]] closing Rabbit Hole Recap by singing +it.[^creed-ordinals] + +The ordinal collection lands in the middle of the spam fight rather than beside +it, and the first recorded call to *filter Creed* is about inscriptions: Ocean +Pool announced it would happily filter Creed's "Stupid Spam" out of the handful +of blocks it mines from time to time.[^creed-ordinals] + +Eight days later the bit acquires a casualty. Justman is reported hospitalized +after listening to "Higher" over 10,000 times in a row, found by his father +rocking back and forth and murmuring "I want to see the golden streets," then +shouting the chorus until he was involuntarily committed. The Bugle traces the +attempt to a [[characters/samson-mow|Samson Mow]] tweet — "The reason we keep +crashing isn't because of Coinbase. It's because you guys aren't playing Higher +on repeat enough" — and reports Bitcoiners gathering outside the hospital +playing Creed in solidarity, one calling Justman "a martyr who put himself in a +bad position selflessly to pump the price for everyone."[^justman-hospital] + +## Filter Creed, second sense (November 2024) + +By the following Thanksgiving the filtering demand has survived its original +justification and found a new one. On *Behind the Podcast*, +[[characters/sly-goomba|Sly Goomba]] arrives with a grievance about Justman's +diet — "tweeting about cereal today. We all know that's not the Bitcoin way" — +and escalates, unprompted but not unassisted, into consensus language: "We need +to we need to filter CREED."[^sly-filter] The charge is no longer spam. It is +that "the first pump of this cycle was shut down because of Creed," and the +proposed remedy is a soft fork away from the band, plus disassociating with +anybody who feels Creed is important in a Bitcoin pump.[^sly-filter] + +## Ambient (2024–2025) + +After that the band stops being an event and becomes furniture. Three weeks +later [[characters/richard-greaser|Richard Greaser]] prescribes it as romantic +infrastructure — a bottle of Pony Lane wine from Justman, then Creed to set the +mood, then a [[characters/lyn-alden|Lyn Alden]] podcast — under Rod's governing +rule that the more hours you have to listen, the more healthy your relationship +is.[^date-night] In March 2025 it surfaces as karaoke at the +[[storylines/btc-sessions|BTC Sessions]] 40th birthday party at Pub Key, sung by +a man in weird gloves lying on the floor, with +[[characters/mike-germano|Mike Germano]] on the intro and +[[characters/opti|Opti]] and [[characters/nico|Nico]] in the room.[^pubkey] + +Its final documented function is as a slur. When Justman is purity-tested in +September 2025 for selling alcohol — on the day of a national assassination, and +in response to his own line that "occasionally staying up until 2AM drinking red +wine with people you love is medicinal"[^purity-wine] — +[[characters/rod-palmer|Rod Palmer]] ventriloquises the imagined snitch, and the +band is the first thing the snitch reaches for: "Ben Jussman fucking everybody +thinks he's so cool because he likes Creed."[^creed-resentment] Rod closes the +loop forty minutes later by proposing a rival offence — "What's what is, what's +more sus? Selling alcohol for Bitcoin or retweeting +[[characters/mike-alfred|Mike Alfred]]?"[^more-sus] + +The arc's last beat is a correction. In November 2025 +[[characters/skate-kate|Skate Kate]] boosts in to retract a misfiling — +"Nickelback is the band that doesn't even qualify as slop not Creed sorry" — +and in the same message coins the line Rod reads out as the episode's legendary +quote: "still drinking that sweet greasy plebs slop like it's artisanal bone +broth."[^kate-nickelback] Creed, after twenty months, has been promoted to +merely bad. + +## On the timeline + +The mania's second life is on X, where the Bugleverse accounts have kept +"Higher" in continuous rotation for years after the news cycle closed — never as +reportage, always as reflex. The pattern that plays out in the podcasts (§Ambient) +runs identically here: nobody argues for Creed and nobody explains the reference; +they simply reach for the chorus whenever the price, or the bit, needs lifting. + +### The song of statecraft + +The 2024 anthem was canonised by fiat, then escalated into a matter of policy. +The hospitalization dispatch — the arc's founding casualty — went out under a +byline crediting its chief theorist, [[characters/richard-greaser|Richard +Greaser]]: "Ben Justman Hospitalized For Mental Breakdown After Listening to +Higher 10,000 Times In A Row Written by @GreaserRichard."[^bugle-hospital-tweet] +By that summer Greaser had promoted the song from bull-market decoration to +electoral obligation: + +> "If Trump doesn't walk out to Higher by Creed at the Bitcoin conference, it +> will likely go down as one of the most egregious political blunders in American +> history" +> — [@GreaserRichard, 2024-07-19](https://x.com/GreaserRichard/status/1814094998859866530) + +The premise is stated plainly: the song is not accompaniment but infrastructure, +and failing to deploy it is a strategic error on the order of a lost war. + +### "Can you take me higher" + +Where the news treated Creed as an event, the timeline treats the chorus as +liturgy — a two-word incantation dropped on any post that needs a pump. The +Bugle pins it directly to [[characters/ben-justman|Ben Justman]] as a buy signal: + + + +> "Can you take me higher?" +> — [@bitcoin_bugle, 2024-09-27](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/1839721503820308507) + +…and drafts [[characters/dennis-porter|Dennis Porter]] as an unlikely lead +vocalist — "Take me higher Mr. Porter"[^porter-tweet] — while +[[orgs/podconf|PODCONF]], predictably, trademarks the affliction outright: +"✅👆Higher ®".[^podconf-tm] The chorus travels best with the source material +attached. Both [[characters/richard-greaser|Greaser]] and +[[characters/rod-palmer|Rod Palmer]] answer stray posts with the identical Scott +Stapp performance clip from the "Higher" video — a year apart, the joke undimmed +by repetition: + +<video controls preload="none" poster="/tweets/2072072344408048017-poster.jpg" src="/tweets/2072072344408048017.mp4" style="width:100%;max-width:620px;border-radius:10px;display:block;margin:.5rem 0;"></video> + +> "Can you take me higher" +> — [@GreaserRichard, 2026-06-30](https://x.com/GreaserRichard/status/2072072344408048017) + +<video controls preload="none" poster="/tweets/1925193684292661704-poster.jpg" src="/tweets/1925193684292661704.mp4" style="width:100%;max-width:620px;border-radius:10px;display:block;margin:.5rem 0;"></video> + +> "We can go higher" +> — [@rodpalmerhodl, 2025-05-21](https://x.com/rodpalmerhodl/status/1925193684292661704) + +*Henry's note: the timeline corroborates the page's thesis from a second archive. +The affliction that began as a dated news event in March 2024 is, three years on, +still a live reflex across at least four accounts — proof that "Higher" long ago +stopped being a song and became a load-bearing piece of the community's +vocabulary, exactly as the [[storylines/bull-market-euphoria|bull-market +euphoria]] arc predicts.* + +## Disputed + +Sources do not agree on what "filter Creed" means. The March 2024 usage is +literal and technical: Ocean Pool filtering the band's ordinal inscriptions as +spam, consistent with everything else in the block-space fight.[^creed-ordinals] +Sly Goomba's November 2024 usage borrows the identical consensus vocabulary — +filter, soft fork — but the object is the band's cultural influence on price +action, and the stated grievance underneath it is breakfast +cereal.[^sly-filter] Both are recorded; no source reconciles them, and the +second never acknowledges the first. + +> irl: Creed, Scott Stapp, "Higher," Nickelback, Samson Mow, Marty Bent and Jordan +> Peterson are real. The hospitalization, the `op_Bullrun` ordinals collection and +> the proposed soft fork are not. + +*Henry's note: this page previously recorded the arc as a March 2024 event +spanning two news articles. The beat index shows it running through at least +November 2025 across five episodes; the span and narrative are corrected here. +Peony Lane — rendered "Pony Lane" on air — has no page yet.* + +[^creed-ordinals]: [[news/creed-launches-ordinal-collection-follow-interest-from-bitcoiners|Bugle News, 2024-03-01 — "Creed Launches Ordinal Collection FollowIng Interest From Bitcoiners"]]. +[^justman-hospital]: [[news/ben-justman-hospitalized-for-mental-breakdown-after-listening-to-higher-10-000-in-a-row|Bugle News, 2024-03-09 — "Ben Justman Hospitalized For Mental Breakdown After Listening to Higher 10,000 Times In A Row"]]. +[^sly-filter]: [[transcripts/sly-goomba-thanksgiving-special-behind-the-podcast-episode-1#t-1675|Behind the Podcast 1 @ 27:55]]. Setup at 27:39 and 27:23; ASR renders Justman as "Ben Justin" at 27:05. A host offers "You wanna you wanna filter CREED?" at 27:49 and Sly adopts it; the soft-fork follow-up is at 27:59. +[^date-night]: [[transcripts/jason-lowerys-drones-bugle-weekly-episode-39#t-3425|Bugle Weekly 39 @ 57:05]]. ASR gives "Ben Jossman", "Hire by Creed" for "Higher", and "Lynn Alden". Rod's rule is at t=3407. +[^pubkey]: [[transcripts/apologizing-to-absolutely-no-one-bugle-weekly-episode-53#t-2089|Bugle Weekly 53 @ 34:49]]. ASR renders Pub Key as "PUBG"; attendees are listed by Rod at t=2097–2144. +[^purity-wine]: [[transcripts/emergency-broadcast-podcasting-under-attack#t-870|Emergency Broadcast: Podcasting Under Attack @ 14:30]]. Justman's tweet continues t=879–887; Greaser endorses it at t=932. ASR calls Justman "Ben Jossman" and, at t=864, "the Korean guy. Korean wine guy" — an ASR wreck, not a claim about his ancestry. +[^creed-resentment]: [[transcripts/emergency-broadcast-podcasting-under-attack#t-973|Emergency Broadcast: Podcasting Under Attack @ 16:13]]. Rod is voicing an unnamed purity-tester, not speaking as himself; the tweeter is never named. +[^more-sus]: [[transcripts/emergency-broadcast-podcasting-under-attack#t-3253|Emergency Broadcast: Podcasting Under Attack @ 54:13]]. Quote spans cues t=3248–3257. Greaser answers at t=3260 ("Nick Carter" is ASR for Nic Carter). +[^kate-nickelback]: [[transcripts/rising-above-slop-bugle-weekly-episode-84#t-3085|Bugle Weekly 84 @ 51:25]]. Read aloud by Rod from Skate Kate's boost; the apology sits at t=3072–3081 and the chapter marker at 3054 is "Nickelback is Worse Than Creed". +[^song-of-bull]: [@bitcoin_bugle, 2024-03-29](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/1773784806213419449). +[^bugle-hospital-tweet]: [@bitcoin_bugle, 2024-03-09](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/1766498934032105593) — the account's promotion of the hospitalization article, naming @GreaserRichard as author. +[^porter-tweet]: [@bitcoin_bugle, 2024-09-05](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/1831486859836621241). +[^podconf-tm]: [@_podconf, 2024-11-24](https://x.com/_podconf/status/1860807900496568404).