And That's Why We Drink - E212 Conspiracy Theory Lasagna and the Migraine Episode

Episode Date: February 28, 2021

It's episode 212 and we're finally gonna come right out and say it: Q ain't cute, friends! Em rounds out their QAnon trilogy with ways this new movement mirrors cult activity and provides resources for people struggling to leave, help friends and family leave or are dealing with the pain of loving loved ones to Q. Then Christine takes us Down Under for the wildly convoluted and gruesome Snowtown Murders. You might need your bag of booze for this one.. and that's why we drink! Please consider supporting the companies that support us! Simply visit athleticgreens.com/DRINK and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today! Go to HELLOTUSHY.com/DRINK for 10% off your order!Go to FelixGrayGlasses.com/DRINK for free shipping and free returns!Get started today at StitchFix.com/DRINK and you’ll get 25% off when youkeep everything in your Fix!Go to FunctionofBeauty.com/DRINK to let them know we sent you, and to get 20% off your order!Go to Brooklinen.com and use promo code ATWWD to get $25 off, with a minimum purchase of $100!

you ready oh my goodness yes i missed you i'm excited to chit chat yeah hello em how are you i'm good i missed you i'm excited to chit chat me too what a coincidence i tried uh calling you facetiming you yesterday just to say hello and you were busy that's fine okay i was busy like doing a family game night with my in-laws i wasn't like busy out on the town or anything you know what busy on zoom with your family in 2020 and 2021 is a night out on the town so okay that's valid excuse me you were clubbing it up as far as i'm concerned one quiplash so i think like i had a big night you know what in the she for lamping nally house absolutely that is a wild competition that's

basically the olympics okay here comes geo sorry he keeps inserting himself into the corner wait let me see if we can see him oh there's his butt curtain coming through puppy dog he keeps doing that but then like then he starts whining because he gets stuck and i'm like nobody made you go back there into that corner anyway em what are you drinking today i well i'm drinking a nice cup of water me too i'm doing it out of my regina pizzeria cup we've discussed this before shout out to boston i just don't have a bigger cup than this and i know that i'm gonna need to uh wet my whistle quite a lot refill my own mouth yes um i'm gonna drink a lot of water in this episode and uh to beat you to the punch i drink because christine oh three cockroaches i have found oh i thought you're calling me a cockroach i'm sorry you said i was like you me and eva no i found three more cockroaches after we were done with this

where did you find i don't even know so i haven't found any so i'm very lucky in that i haven't three more cockroaches after we were done with this. Oh, M. Where did you find? I don't even want to know. So I haven't found any. So I'm very lucky in that I haven't been re-traumatized the same. But Allison found all three of them, and she's fucking over it. So we, tomorrow, are re-spraying the whole place. So the live show that we have by the way is going to be filmed at our and that's why we drink studio because i am not allowed to be here because the cockroach man said

that i need to be fair that's probably better because then you're the only one using the internet and stuff so it might even be very true well no allison has to come with me no one can be here because then tell her to get off the internet. Tell her she better be watching my fucking show. That's exactly. Hang on a second. Exactly. But anyway, I drink because I don't have control and that gives me anxiety and I'm angry. What are you drinking?

Wow. That's nice. I'm also drinking water because it's only three here. That's nice. I'm also drinking water because it's only three here. And unfortunately, I need to hold off on the boo because once again we forgot so did you say i did last week no did you call me poopy face again no you were supposed to check on it now i'm gonna make it even worse oh no now wait hang on you don't even check on my editing prowess i you know what we really have forgotten so much about this i even forgot to look i don't even check on my editing prowess. I, you know what? We really have forgotten so much about this. I even forgot to look. I don't even, I have no idea what my-

Because even you said, oh, I'm going to re-listen to this since you covered QAnon. And you clearly didn't because you didn't check. I listened to it. I didn't watch it on YouTube. Uh-huh. I did. I really did. I was actually very nervous.

And Christine and Eva can both vouch for this. I appreciate everyone's kind words about what I've been doing with QAnon and my research, but I have been very paranoid. And so it's nice to know that people are not mad at me, which is fun. So that being said, I'm going to go look at our YouTube right now. Okay. Well, Jess even posted it on Instagram and you didn't check. Okay. Well, whatever. I also, okay. I'm just made the most beautiful face of me and i'm distracted no i was like did she did she hang on yeah and that's why she posted it and said go check what christine changed em's name too so it's not oh i see a sneak peek anyway whatever your name already on here has changed because i've already gotten mad and done it in the future you know it's okay

i was gonna say my if you were to change your right now or something i wouldn't even notice because my notes are hiding me uh great you know what i don't know what you wrote i'm just gonna assume i hate you because i assume the name is very silly on youtube okay i changed mine hey it's i can see that one it says m sucks with 40 000 x's uh so okay here goes m great now this is just spiraling out of control as per usual here i go here i go again hmm what am i gonna say christine is la cucaracha oh no i'm not the three cockroaches in your apartment please okay here's what here's something really funny is i didn't know how to spell cucaracha so i was gonna write cockroaches but as i was trying to figure it out i'd already written m is christine is cockroaches i wrote la for la cucaracha and then i psyched myself out so i was gonna write la cockroach but then i got

nervous and in my anxiety after pausing i looked back and i'd written christine is la cock well you've crossed many lines now so anything i've called you about a poopy head you've just what is it you literally left it like that you are such a demon geez you know what okay i'll change it i'll change it i'll change it i'll change it i'll change it okay here's the thing we're really spiraling already well what else is new um i also oh shoot what was i gonna say hang on let me think hmm we've got nothing but time girl hang on i really did have something to say one second oh i know okay i actually do have a reason why i drink m which is that the other night i was so i've started watching paranormal witness because a couple people uh i think some of your favorite favorite little little turd great thank you little tea you know how i feel about that i'm like with

a little pea little pea little pea has been coming in useful by the way with my noise neighbors i've been banging i'm on the ceiling a lot so beautiful so i was glad because at first when he said useful i was like please tell me it's not in the toilet. No, but in terms of soundproofing, it's just in a way we didn't see coming. It's a soundproofing tool, but not in the way intended. Yeah, I love that. Just by shutting them up.

Okay, sorry. Paranormal Witness. Yeah, so I started watching that, which is super spooky. And I watched it on YouTube TV because it's free on there. Have you ever seen this show? I don't think so. I'm surprised I haven't seen it. It's very creepy.

Like, it actually scares me. And I was watching it one night and I got, like, really into it and watched, like, five episodes in a row. And I got really spooked. And I was sitting in bed and all of a sudden my bedroom door slammed. Like, I'm not kidding. Like, it didn't just, like, close. The whole thing slammed and like geo and juni jumped up and were staring and everybody was like on edge and then i walked over

and moonshine was just sitting there with his fucking paw on the door okay and started crying crying he wanted you to see it he was like yeah i'm the fucking culprit he did it and then he went well i want to get out now and i was was like, well, you fucking did that. Like, what are you doing? And so I realized now that my cat has powers that I didn't realize he had. He can slam doors. Like, slam doors. It was open, open.

And Blaze's stuff keeps getting moved around. And I was like, oh, no, it's a ghost. And one day I was in bed and I saw something out of the corner of my eye. And Moony had jumped onto the counter in the bathroom and carried Blazeze's glasses out of the bathroom and his mouth in his mouth and carried them into the bed and put them behind blaze's pillow and i went oh my god this cat is literally carrying objects around the house and put and the other day one of my slippers went missing the cat had taken my he's still a baby the cat had taken my slipper and carried it behind a tree in our living room and it was just hidden there i don't know this

cat is bonkers and he likes to put things in his water bowl he's obsessed with water so i keep finding screws and like little object sunglasses he drops them all in the water bowls this cat is gonna eat a screw one day yeah also like yeah this is what so we're dog people in this household and one of the reasons now that i can tack on the list is because apparently none of your items are safe it's like having a little with a dog dogs eat them well if you put things high enough though usually unless you're like your dog like counter surfs or whatever like cats have access to everything it's like having uh i feel like it's akin to having a toddler where you're like oh i gotta move that i gotta move that before they

grab it i feel like cats can just get anything like nothing is safe but nobody warned me about this aspect of cats like i've had cats my whole life they've never carried hidden in our glasses and slippers like this is so next level i mean i feel like this cat is like a like a reincarnate like someone who likes to fuck with you i think this is someone from a past life because this is it's i mean that's reaching but it's also like i've decided it's true that it's probably like an a familiar or something who's just like hey fuck you i know it's amazing i it feels like a fuck you. And I mean, it's kind of cute when you see it happen. I honestly, I'm just relieved because at first I was like,

oh my God, there's a ghost like moving our stuff and slamming doors. And I'm like, okay, if it's the cat, it's so much easier to blame everything. Every weird noise, every strange object moving is the cat. There was one night I was watching the show and we all heard footsteps on the stairs which happens a lot and i was like oh it's mooney and then i look over and all three pets are in the bed with me and they all their ears all go up and i went well cool so there there are still things that happen that i can't blame on moon um and it's always the stairs and that's the stairs that staircase that blaze that one time heard and called me like there's someone in our house

um so i don't know what's up with the stairs but you know i know what's up with the stairs everyone here knows what's up with the stairs they're fucking haunted christine are you kidding me i have no idea what happened you got them from like a church or something what are you talking about okay i didn't the last people who lived there did all right it's like a weird like like everyone's like collaborating to build a really haunted home every every new person brings in a new patch of haunted and it just the next owner's like how did it get this way it's like a vortex yeah it's like zach bagans museum but like unintended and i don't get paid for people coming over and i but i still have to sign 11-page fucking waiver to walk into that house.

Okay, that's fair. I will probably set up a waiver. Also, before I forget, so you know how we've been doing why we drink and what we drink again? Some people have gotten a little nostalgic and have asked, hey, why don't you do milkshake and wine facts anymore? And so I became prepared with a milkshake fact for you because it's been so long. And I just thought, why not do something a little like you know harken back to the early days a harkening i love that and to answer people's

questions of why don't we do that you try to find 250 milkshake facts it gets really hard but okay that's you found one part of the problem is that I don't know if we, we could very well have covered this 200 episodes ago and have completely forgotten. Okay. So I'm going to say it again if we did, but I don't think so because I've never heard about this before. So I found this fact. It says the milkshakes in Rhode Island are thought to be called cabinets because people

use, people used to keep their blenders in a small wooden cabinet rhode island's cabinets are not like the typical milkshake either they do not contain ice cream a cabinet is just milk and flavoring mixed okay well that's not even a milkshake so chocolate milk is so like chocolate milk yeah i don't know i didn't read all the way through until just now we were learning together which is fun the cabinet that's odd i had heard of them being called cabinets but i didn't know where and i didn't know why so i rhode island is very specific like very specific um it's not just like new england it's just rhode island that's fun well then in that case craft mac and cheese is a cabinet if i'm just mixing

milk and something and that equals in a blender well i guess not in the blender oh can you imagine um well i also want to add um eva came up with a good point too that we do have a fun fact which is i'm gonna another fun fact which is i'm gonna give you all a sneak peek as to what the uh monthly milkshake of the month is in our newsletter and uh if you want to sign up for our newsletter it's super fun eva said this is like i haven't gotten a full look at it yet but eva said it's her favorite i think ever so far so i'm really excited about it that's um yeah it's great just is doing an awesome job with those so if you want to sign up you can go to and that's where you drink.com

they're free um it's just comes to your inbox monthly, and Patreon donors get a separate one through Patreon. But the milkshake of the month, because it's Valentine's Day month, is the Red Velvet Milkshake. Oh, that's fun. Which sounds, that's like my, my jam. Like, that sounds so good. Allison's a big Red Velvet fan. I don't care about it. I'm very on the fence. It doesn't seem like something you'd love, yeah. If it care about it I'm very on the fence it doesn't seem like

something you'd love yeah if it's there I'm gonna absolutely eat it but I'm not gonna order it you know what I mean yeah yeah I would order probably eight of them um but you know but that's fun and a milkshake and it gets all like red and swirly and it reminds me of port uh portillo's in Chicago which by the way people ask uh a lot during Marvel Monday or whenever they get their hands on me, they'll ask what my favorite milkshake is. And I would just like to scream into the void for the thousandth time, Portillo's Chicago. They have the best milkshake because they put a whole fucking slice of cake in their milkshake. What's the flavor? It's chocolate.

But I imagine you could do the same really easily with this red velvet stuff if you put a slice of red velvet cake in milk and then maybe like an extra couple drops of red food coloring for like the fun of it it could get real crazy yeah or you could just put it in a cabinet if you're in rhode island yeah or yeah you could drink half of it and then leave the rest in a cabinet and just like really get things crazy and then that's how cockroaches and that's how you get the cucarachas exactly anyway well thank you for listening to my update my my updated milkshake facts um that was from avivadirectory.com which lord knows what that is uh but there you go. Thank you. That, no, that made me very happy. Oh, good.

A hearken we shall go. I love it. Oh, yes. That was exactly what I was thinking. So now that we've said a lot of things that make us happy, let's say things that make us sad. What do you think? Oh, fantastic. I'm in.

Okay. i'm in uh okay so and this is uh this is long again but this is my final piece look at his face sorry he started just sticking his head out oh this is see now he's stuck again now he wants me to move the entire table and the plant and the microphone so he can sneak his way out uh you actually that was perfect time because allison texted me at the same time so i got to do she probably heard you talking about her probably if you hear a scream by the way she found another cockroach that's how you'll know is that what the text was no but i she was just texting me about something else but every time she does text me now i'm terrified oh i see what you're saying so if we do hear one throughout the episode that's most likely what's going on i see if you if you see me scream and it's not because of your story

it's because of a cockroach tip okay so here is my the finale of my trilogy that is the final installment and to give people an idea of the categories we're going through today because you seem to like them a la Jeopardy last time uh conspiracy theories how they what they stem from to begin with which is a little bit of an add-on from last week about how people get sucked into this stuff right um and then how did this spread so fast ways it is like a cult and uh how to help someone get out ways it is like a cult sounds like the most jeopardy one like ways it's like a cult for 400 i think you picked it for 400 last time i did i picked it for 200 i decided to up the today and apologies in case you are someone who likes

short episodes you that is not this one um i think like for the last five weeks they've figured out pretty quickly that's out the window i know i know i just i i want them to know that at least i'm aware okay conspiracy we're very self-aware even when we do stupid stupid things i try like i'm gonna try if it's gonna annoy you i just want to beat you to the punch before i hear about it meanly in a comment one day it's like i i know i know it's not great okay so here is conspiracy theories uh and where they stem from for 100 so just to remind people and if you are choosing to not listen to the first two episodes bold um but here we are conspiracy theories stem from fear anxiety mistrust uncertainty loneliness powerlessness uh especially during social and or political unrest um and then

conspiracy theories help fill the psychological needs for people during those times when they are trying to protect themselves or their worldview and it helps alleviate their doubts and their fears aka conspiracy theories in general, not just QAnon, but one of the main ways that they lure you in is that they come from grasping at straws when you are desperate for an answer to something you can't control.

And given the state of the last year, people are looking for a lot of answers about a lot of things that they couldn't control. And there were a lot of straws to pull from and all those straws became QAnon um bummer it's such a bummer so another thing that brings a lot of people in it's just a timeless trait of conspiracy theories and which can ultimately lead to cults is that it's the us versus them trope with QAnon it's the fear that evil forces will harm innocent people. And without really saying it so directly, if you join us, you will help save the human race.

Yikes. Even if the belief doesn't make a lot of sense, it will still offer an explanation for what's happening in the world. So it's just a way to say like, OK, this even though this feels chaotic, there's a plan. There's a reason for this. and I can sleep better at night. And I looked into a few different articles in the psychology of conspiracy theories and how people fall into this. And a lot of people, there was one I read from Cambridge that said, there are three main benefits to conspiracy thinking.

And the three benefits can be categorized into epistemic, existential and social. So epistemic, the benefit is that it provides an order to events that you can't control gives you an explanation. The existential benefit is that it distracts you from social tension because you're focusing on something else. Okay. And the social benefit is that it provides you a community to help validate all of your fears. So just to make that easier to swallow or to remember, the three main benefits of conspiracy thinking are that they relieve, distract, and validate your anxieties. Interesting. That's so fascinating. Okay. Thank you. Oh my god. Okay. It is. I mean,

this is one of my favorite series you've ever covered. I say that a lot when you cover things, but this is just so fascinating to me. Oh, thank you. Well, yeah, the articles that I was reading were not in a bad way, but they were just very flowery. And I was like, okay, how do I make this kind of like a bite-sized thing? So Christine the cockroach can actually understand what's going on. So the three main benefits are relieving distracting and validating cool so i mentioned this last time when we had our

rousing conversation about anti-semitism wasn't that fun wasn't that fun oh wow i've never lost more sleep wondering if i offended somebody i remember i well i remember i was editing the episode and i just every time i've said i i responded it was because i was like i'm terrified yeah i was like i feel like evans got this covered and i'm not gonna insert myself i'm just gonna like understand and agree and go i am jewish and i so i like you know in theory that means that i would be less least likely to offend other people in my community or something but i i was terrified that i was not doing it right well especially because even if you're in the community it doesn't mean you are like

yeah it doesn't mean you're like totally immune to you know being respectful yeah you know i think you did a great job i was really hoping people would be like well m's jewish so they know what they're talking about but then like that was my fear i was like hopefully like people at least could lean into that if i said something offensive i really hope i didn't but um but no you're right like even if you are i didn't even have that benefit i was just like i'm gonna just sit back and uh this. Just because you are Jewish does not mean you can't also have anti-Semitic views. Right, right. No one gets a pass on that. Gets a free pass, yeah.

So anyway, just like how I mentioned anti-Semitism last time, let's reopen the wound and talk about it again real quick. Oh, okay. Rousing. Let's re-rouse it. Got it. Let's get re-rouse it got it let's re let's get re-roused yikes okay um so q anon wants you to think that these beliefs are new but they're fucking not um but a lot of people like this is the the conspiracy theory for the ages and like

revolutionary or something yeah and although that may be true in some ways it's certainly not because of their beliefs like right like right the it's the same classic fringe beliefs but with a modern twist it's it's basically um like the game telephone you know like so most conspiracy theories aren't new they're just how i wrote it remixed for this generation um remix and so uh remix for this generation's fears and this generation's unrest so in this case it would be human trafficking is a big thing we talk about a lot so they found the the anxiety of this generation and rewrote the same script for a new audience right for example that you know talking about global bankers and drinking kids blood you know that's wow where have we heard that before oh yeah for the last unfortunately the last thousand fucking years um and so there's a lot of anti-semitic tropes on

blood libel which i talked about last time also one of the reasons that q anon is so alluring and why conspiracy theories in general are alluring is because they will find a way to work off of your emotions. And in this case, they were telling people that kids are being harmed, which is just a timeless way to rally people together because it triggers outrage. It's juicy enough to spread on its own.

And with it being vague enough, you can almost write it however traumatically you want. So you can, you know, pull on people's vulnerabilities and really sucker them in. Also, when challenged, they will rationalize their worldview and anxieties however they need to to make it make sense, which I find ironic because that means this group of people are building themselves a safe space every time they get challenged which the people who make fun of all of us in our safe spaces and being snowflakes or whatever the second that yeah there's an inconsistency in their belief system they'll double down and freak out because psychologically what's happening is they're

building they're trying to maintain the safe space they've created for themselves. Sure. So Freud, who is often, you know, not right. LMAO. In this case, he is. So there's, he has one theory on errors versus illusions. And an error is a lack of knowledge or poor logic, aka you were wrong because you didn't have the evidence in front of you or you didn't stand corrected when challenged illusions or delusions is wishful thinking very wishful thinking to a point of just complete denial of reality so you know that it's a conspiracy theory versus doing your own research when empirical evidence doesn't do anything for you. You're just sticking with what your original claim was. Yeah.

And so it's basically a lot of psychologists have called it motivated reasoning because even if something sounds wild, it makes more sense to them if it means they get to keep accepting the world that they've built for themselves. Got it. Okay. And a lot of that comes with like COVID covid for example if you are so afraid of getting covid it's a lot easier than it's a lot easier to just pretend it doesn't exist because then at least you can't get it that way so there's a there's a lot of projecting involved there's a lot of finger pointing and like blaming the other it's like oh well covid isn't real you made it up you

made it up because you just want to scare us it's like no covid's fucking real and you're just afraid to face reality so what q anon also ends up doing is justifying projecting your fears on other people which reinforces and us versus them and just makes the wedge further and further or the wedge bigger and bigger so this conspiracy theory q anon what's interesting about this is it's very different than other conspiracy theories that happened before this especially the ones that were pre-internet um and so i'm just going to say real quick some of the reasons why this has been even more problematic than other conspiracy theories slash cults up until now compared to cults before the internet. So first of all, this is kind of a smaller one that I thought of, but I think it

deserves to be mentioned because there are people out there exploiting victims of cults. With the internet, public figures can get involved because they want the views or the monetization. So you don't even have to be a believer at this point. If you hear about it and have an audience, you can spread misinformation by accident, and you're also reaping financial benefits from it. Basically, if you fall into people's algorithms, I'm speaking specifically about YouTubers, because there have been a lot of people who came from QAnon and have been spreading things specifically through YouTube and video series or things like that. And when it comes to reaping the benefits of QAnon, there's been a lot of talk of people that are spreading these videos are creating this content.

They don't even believe in it. They think it's complete bullshit, but they know other people do believe in it. And they're working off of that that so that's like extra fucked up yeah so yeah uh like i said last time and this is not me pointing fingers specifically at these three people but an example is how some people think that q anon is one of the three original redditors who brought it to youtube and then people there's a group of people who think like well they don't even believe in q anon they just wanted to pump their own you know narrative and you know maybe they're just doing it for numbers or whatever there's a it's it's all alleged but it is something worthy to pay it like noteworthy to pay attention to of like if enough

people believe this thing and you want to gain numbers all you got to do is talk about that thing to those people whether or not you agree with them totally you have your audience built in yeah and because of the algorithm especially people being at home and using their internet more than ever and the algorithm being even more accurate much quicker than usual you're getting especially with conspiracy theories that it's extra dangerous because your audience comes from the algorithms of multiple people with different interests that can all fall into your audience so it's not just people that

believe in QAnon it's people like me who are fucking researching it for the benefit of the good or it's truth seekers or it's true crime fans or it's people who have a fascination with cults a lot of our audience a lot of a lot of our audience a lot of a lot of our audience who could genuinely be looking up information not because they're falling into

a trap but because they just want to know about it for the sake of fascination and all of a sudden you're getting videos like this that can slowly seep into your way of thinking um totally so i just wanted to say that and i am aware of the very really really thick irony here of that like i am in in some ways a public figure that is in some ways monetizing on us talking about q anon right now um so when i'm talking about like public figures getting involved even if they don't believe in it i i hear it but i would argue that we're trying to educate people away from it versus yeah i don't know if that's the same thing i just i as i was like writing those notes i was like oh this feels kind of gross because like we literally have a podcast and we're talking about this that's our whole podcast i mean i i discuss

crime and murder every week so it's just endlessly like talking about horrible horrible things which technically we do as a career but i mean i like to at least think hopefully it's true that we do it in a more educational like awareness type way than like hey join us i like to think so too i just i felt kind of i just want to address that i felt a little hypocritical writing it because i was like, I'm almost like shaming public figures for spreading awareness on like random topics. And it's like, okay, well, hello, hi. But But yeah, so there are a lot of people who are doing it for nefarious reasons. Right. And if you are an influencer or a creator, and this is also a PSA to people out there who

want to become influencers or creators, and your interest happens to be true crime. And now you want to do a YouTube video about QAnon and you think it's going to be like, funny and entertaining because it's about lizard people. You have to be really aware of the message that's coming across and the outreach or the amount of people that you could reach with your video. Because if you think you're just doing a silly little video, but you haven't done your research you could be spreading this information to people who are really taking your video seriously so it's just another way it's just one of the ways that the internet has infiltrated this conspiracy theory because people on purpose or completely inadvertently can be reaching the masses and accidentally sucking them into something

that they that's not the intention so i'm sorry for getting on my soapbox there but that was kind of a half psa you're almost like getting off you're almost like getting off your soapbox you're like i'm gonna step off my soapbox and say i know what i'm saying well perfect i i just i if you are a content creator out there and you're like i'm gonna do to do a QAnon video, this is me urging you to please not sound like QAnon, but do your research because someone out there is listening and eager to learn more because of your video or your content or whatever it is. So just interesting.

Okay. Quote public figure. If we're calling ourselves that to other public figures, please just be aware of how you are presenting research. Sure, sure. For the safety of the people, because there are a lot of people losing it right now. So one of the ways with the internet is public figures getting involved and taking advantage of those who are already manipulated into this. Another thing is how radicalized people can become with random content,

like even memes, they're easily like even memes they're easily editable they're easily shareable within seconds arguably depending on what account it's on thousands of people can see it right away it's just like the fastest way to spread content not memes necessarily but posting anything i mean the way that information is being spread is insane this isn't a normal conspiracy theory or fringe group where there's 50 people on a plot of land and you just hype each other up like it's not 50 people now it's right everybody is getting access to this shit and within a day like x amount of people are now looking at this information and some of them are gonna fall for it yeah um so how it spread so fast beyond the Internet.

First of all, it already had some traction because of Pizzagate and, you know, QAnon started back in 2017. So I do forget that there are people who have been in this movement for years. But this wasn't necessarily a brand new thing. This was already for years kind of infiltrating Reddit. People were aware of it. There were a bunch of accounts that did talk about it we just weren't paying attention and by 2018 which i mentioned last time in the midterm elections q anon was considered mainstream because enough people had kind of rallied together with this belief system so by 2018 it really started blowing up and when i say blowing up i mean time magazine listed it as one of the 25 most influential people on the internet. What? It was like- Wait, like listed Q as or just-

QAnon or Q. Oh, wow. Okay. As one of- I would say Q the person. I wrote all my notes in shorthand where Q means Q and QAnon. So I don't remember which one it is, but I would imagine they're talking about Q the person.

The individual. Yeah. The top secret clearance guy. Who started all this bullshit, yeah. Yeah. Can you imagine being that Reddit guy in the basement being like, oh my god, Timeless sent me as one of the top 25. Yeah, and I can't even say anything.

I can't even brag about it. Anyway, so it's the masses are finding out about it. There was an app that came out called Q Drops, which was just meant to release breadcrumbs in an easier way. It was the number one popular paid app and entertainment when it first came out. Just in the entertainment section of Apple, it was the number one most popular, but it was overall like world popularity. It was number 10. It's been taken down. But you know, this is just to show you like how fast they were really

getting into like, I mean, Apple was Yeah, I i mean that's really sobering like yeah number one in entertainment yeah and also this is like i i am someone who goes on reddit so i'm not trying to like poopoo on reddit but when reddit has a uh in my opinion in a lot of ways it's got kind of a grimy feel to it where if you find something on reddit i usually think like oh well that's not entirely like a credible source or you know there are certain facets of reddit you've got to be careful like who you're talking to or what they're saying and you know it's not super reliable but then it goes from reddit in 2017 to by a year later q anon like time magazine apple like people are talking about this shit.

Right. So it just goes to show you that it's a reminder that falling for these conspiracy theories and things like that, it's very insidious to a point where it's showing itself in real time in everyday life

and you don't see it happening. Yeah. So just a reminder that to not shame the victims because anyone can fall into this. So it already had traction, at least enough that people could find information relatively easily by 2018. And the perfect storm, there's like four main ingredients to this horrible recipe. I'm going to get into the four spots.

But I do really quickly want to say that a summary of what QAnon is, I found three really good quotes, and I just couldn't pick between them. So I wanted to read them all here before I start breaking things down. But a reminder that we've talked about it in the last few episodes that QAnon is a compilation of pretty much every conspiracy theory. So if you have a crazy belief, quote, crazy belief, you're likely to fall for it. And everyone's got a crazy belief. So everyone's susceptible and everyone's at risk. So here are three really good quotes I found summarizing what QAnon is.

If the Internet is one big rabbit hole containing infinitely recursive rabbit holes, QAnon has somehow found its way down all of them, gulping up lesser conspiracy theories as it goes. all of them gulping up lesser conspiracy theories as it goes. Another one is the QAnon conspiracy isn't appealing because it's a coherent narrative, but because it's a grab bag of moral panics that have all been squashed together to create a rat king conspiracy. Wow. Wow. And then the last one is if you believe anything off the beaten path, you're welcome to the family. So, yeah, that is really telling. path you're welcome to the family so oh yeah that is really telling yeah so it's just there's a reason in 2017 it was like a post on reddit and now it's like we have to worry about the percentage of people who believe in this like it's so easy to fall into this yeah so um because q anon is

such a massive umbrella um it can accommodate almost anyone's weird belief. And one thing that one thing that helps QAnon gain followers is that, like I said, everyone has a weird belief, and yours has already been justified. They've already found reasons for almost every conspiracy theory to make sense. So if I'm into time travel, and I find a group of people who are like, oh, we have evidence for that. And you trust them as a a community you're probably not checking or you know looking at your own research you're just kind of blindly following and they're giving you answers for how your weird belief is correct your specific interest yeah yeah it's very sinister because there's so many beliefs that not only are you falling into your own faction but every faction

kind of has its own weird fringe extreme beliefs but they won't lead with that so if i'm looking at time travel over here i'm not noticing all these other little conspiracy theories seeping into the folds and by the time i'm fully invested and i look in the rear view mirror all of a sudden i have fallen for all these other random beliefs. So it's like a conspiracy theory lasagna. And it's also like sleight of hand magic because you really can be looking at this thing and not even notice that this thing is seeping into your worldview. So by the time you are aware of it, it's too late. Also, I'm just putting this in here really quick. I think it's I'm not saying this is how it happens but i imagine at least one person has this quote excuse

or reasoning behind why they ended up falling into q anon i remember every single person in the last year just being like it's 2020 like anything could happen and i wouldn't be shocked right people being like it's 2020 you could tell me anything and i'd believe it and honestly a lot of weird shit happened that lizard people are like kind of not the craziest. So like, to me, I'm like, okay, sure. Fucking lizard people. I can't be surprised anymore. I mean, it's the things that happened in 2020.

If we had somebody had said, oh, guess what's going to happen next year in 2019? We would be like, okay, lock this person up. Like, yeah, they're losing it. Yeah. So I think it really was this isn't even mentioned in like the psychology of how people are getting sucked into q anon but it's just a personal note that like we were all so broken by last year we were really fucking broken as people and the human mind should not go through the year we fucking went through as a society and i think that was

kind of like half the job was already done and that we were like primed for it we were so willing to just any answer would fucking do like how did this happen so any community any answer any explanation anyone anyone that was going to validate a theory on how the hell this world is the way it is. And like any, you know, I don't, I'm not saying that that was everyone's way of thinking, but I wouldn't be shocked if someone was like, you know what? My reason of how I got into QAnon,

it was fucking 2020. I'd be like, okay, that fucking checks out. Yeah, my life was upside down already, you know? Yeah, so anyway, there's that. Also, another part to this recipe beyond that it's just like a conglomerate basically of conspiracy theories is that it was a movement that's telling you to do your own research and trust nobody who doubts you even if they're people in your own group which like only makes the people

who you do trust even stronger with you and reinforces the community it's ironic to me because i feel like that should tear the community apart. But you're just finding specific people to really latch on to. But whatever your opinion is, about anything, it's already going to be validated by somebody, you just have to find the right people to really suck yourself in with. Even if the do your own research, quote, or concept, even if that meant do the research that I did, not the research you want to do, but do the research I did because, you know, validate my belief. Now you could be,

it's just, it's just such a wild concept that I've been talking about for three fucking weeks with everybody. So I'm sorry, but like, I've never seen a conspiracy theory like this or from all the research. Nobody has where like the conspiracy theory itself is that everybody but you is wrong unless they agree with you so if everybody thinks that then everybody is wrong but no so you can't

trust anybody even in your own group but that's also but that's also the thing that everyone is bonding over is that we can't trust anyone haha even you like you like it's, it makes it's just wild. So on top of having no ability to trust people, having any of your conspiracy theories being immediately justified, and now having a community that's going to tell you that all of your opinions are right, you know, however, whatever that means. Then we've got social media, which I have touched on a lot. But now this is like my real section where I just completely roast social media. So real quick, here is a survey that was done right before the lockdown. I guess QAnon was already had enough traction that they were doing surveys about QAnon before it became an issue.

But so there was a Pew Research survey that happened at the beginning of 2020 so before the lockdown before covid before people were really getting sucked into the shit three percent of americans said that they had heard or read a lot about q anon only three percent okay within the first six months of 2020 so that would be what june so three months of being locked inside after three months of being locked inside. After three months of being locked inside, there was another Pew Research survey where 47% of Americans had heard of QAnon. What's even worse is that three months later, by September 2020, so six months in lockdown, 25 to 30 percent of q of people said that q anon was partly or mostly true oh my goodness which is a quarter to a third based on the survey you're looking at talk about viral i mean yeah

spot on um or almost a quarter to almost a third but yeah so that's uh no days in lockdown was three percent of people three months in lockdown was 47 and another three months in lockdown was 3% of people. Three months in lockdown was 47. And another three months in lockdown was a quarter of the world thought it was true, not just heard of it, but thought part of it was true, which this is the world, not just the US. Sorry, Americans. I'm sorry. No, you're fine. I was like, holy cannoli. They were all American. So that's interesting, because it means in the first three months of lockdown, almost half of Americans had at least heard of QAnon. But three months later, a quarter of Americans kind of believed it. So even though the number is lower, the impact is more serious.

And you have to remember, like in June also, there was so much social unrest that kind of blew up for months. And that probably fed massively because that's when I started reading about QAnon. That's so true. During the social unrest. Right. To be honest, it was so anxiety inducing that I just didn't include the information because it really made me lose a lot of faith in humanity. Uh oh. Let's just say a horrifying and humiliating amount of people really are so vulnerable to this world. Yeah. Which is just my way of coaxing the people who have lost loved ones to this. You are not alone at fucking all. No, yeah, yeah. lost loved ones to this you are not alone at fucking all yeah yeah um so i've said this

earlier too but just to remind everybody in case you don't remember how 2020 went um folks were locked inside there was nothing to do during what i consider one of modern history's most stressful times um people were confused people were scared people needed social interaction people were spending all fucking day on social media more than they used to and they were just getting royally fucked by these insidious algorithms like royally fucked and then they were through those algorithms they were spiraling downward a rabbit hole that they could not climb out of especially when a lot of them were digitally illiterate like baby boomers who

thought they were properly fact checking or thought they knew how the algorithms were working and how they could get out of those algorithms. And so a lot of people just got I mean, you didn't stand a chance, basically, if you looked up one video about it, and it's in your algorithm, and you don't really know how to like shift gears and look at other content for a little bit to change up the your platform's algorithm you're fucked and so there were panicked people this is most of the people who got sucked into q anon first they were really panicked especially about covid but because covid was so new there was no information yet so experts didn't have answers at least answers people wanted to hear. And it truly, I can attest this felt like it was the end of the fucking world when this all started. And when people

were looking for answers, the only answers that they could really find were on social media from uncredible sources, because actual scientists were busy getting the real information for you. And I would also argue, by the way, that a lot of experts were working day and night to get you information as soon as possible. But it wasn't fast enough for people to feel like they were getting the answers. Or it wasn't being disseminated properly by the powers that. Perfect. OK, you get it.

Yes. So when looking for answers, they would end up on social media. A lot of those ended up becoming QAnon accounts. And it just got spread really quickly to people's algorithms. Because like I said, last week, and I said also just now too, if you believe anything, QAnon is subtle and vague enough that it can slip into any belief. So even people our age are now being affected by it because they're part of like, new age or energy pages and energy accounts and you know more of the the woo woo stuff the granola stuff right um if you're into also

conspiracy theories or if you're into even something as simple as like crystals and things like that like it's so easy for someone who kind of believes in fringe q anon stuff to just show up on your page and then you're screwed. People were getting QAnon information from everywhere, whether that was Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, many alt-right apps. So like Parler and Gab are talking about that stuff. And eventually it's just hard to not pay attention to because even if something sounded kind of fringe and extreme to you on one page, it's just like psychology, like the proximity effect of if you see it enough times at a sheer curiosity, you're going to kind of look at it.

And then eventually the internet thinks that's what you like to look at. And then it's all you're being shown. So it's, it's hard to not pay attention over time, especially when you've got nothing to do, but look at the internet and just see what's going on. Basically by March, 2020 and the lockdown, there was an immediate massive spike in Facebook numbers to QAnon accounts.

I saw one poll that said QAnon accounts, there were originally 200,000 searches or 200,000 follows or people hits. Within that month, it went from 200, 000 to 1.5 million oh boy another quote i think this one was about instagram this might no no this was facebook in just four months membership of the biggest public q anon groups rose by 700 oh my goodness also q anon activity nearly tripled on facebook it nearly nearly doubled on Instagram and Twitter. A lot of this, not only were we all inside looking for answers, people were on Reddit for even more hours than they were before. And algorithms were catching up.

But on top of all of that, when people were inside, a documentary showed up on YouTube. I think it was on YouTube that reintroduced us to pizzagate which is uh-huh and that was in april and by june was when pizzagate became this like huge massive thing all over again so now we're just reopening that wound while everyone's bored inside and doom scrolling basically yeah yeah um so by june 2020 hashtag pizzagizzagate on TikTok apparently was, quote, viewed more than 82 million times. Oh, my gosh. and nearly 600,000 on Instagram, which is interesting because when Pizzagate was at its actual peak in 2016, Pizzagate only, like comments, likes, and shares only got to 93,000.

And- So in 2016, it got 93,000 hits. And 2020, when it got reopened and everyone was inside, Pizzagate went from 93,000 hits to spiking to 600iking to 600 000 wow so it really took off the second time yeah man second time around it was more popular even though i'm sure that poor fucking pizza place was like i thought we were done with this i thought we had brushed that as finally put that behind us also there were two videos that also came out during the pandemic that really spread QAnon information. One was called Plandemic, a.k.a. the pandemic is a plan and a hoax and a setup.

The other was Fall Cabal, which was a 10 part video series that I'm pretty sure was like an intro into QAnon. And I never saw it. I tried to find it. Honestly, I just didn't want to watch 10 fucking videos on this. No? That's weird. But I'm assuming it was kind of like a QAnon 101, and it kind of like slowly got you involved in all of this. So anyway, those two were very powerful.

I would say if you're a QAnon family or you have a QAnon belief system, those are like household names now, those two videos. That's what I'm gathering. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but it felt like that because a lot of people talked about those two videos and how it helped them get involved. Uh-huh. And it got to a point where once people were realizing how dangerous QAnon is, representatives for these platforms were saying that they were going to start removing accounts uh and they were more or less on it i have quite an opinion on this um just because i think i'm primed to be angry i want

to be angry at somebody because of how dangerous q anon got but i and so i want to blame social media for not doing something about it but then then there's like, what could they have done like without there really being like some sort of issue against. Facebook's in huge trouble about that. Right. And I and I it's a weird controversial topic in that like, I don't want to suggest that like I'm not for freedom of speech. But at the same time, like there should have been policy.

In my opinion, there should have been policy set in place a lot earlier and um yeah i mean it's one thing to let people freedom of speech it's another thing to say like you're spreading dangerous and false yes new like news presented as news media that is harming people i mean and i and i'm i'm just super sensitive to it because i literally have been reading this shit for almost a month now a non and i'm i'm just super sensitive to it because i literally have been reading this shit for almost a month now non-stop so i'm just like how did nobody fucking do something about this and i would from what i saw from what i read i feel comfortable saying that i feel like a lot of these social media platforms were very reluctant to do anything about it until it was too late um oh yeah and so i just like don't want

like any like someone to fucking sue me but i i feel like i don't think i mean i think this is a hugely popular belief now that like okay cool fuck us all with his like refusal to act or do anything right and and yeah and i would i would definitely blame Mark Zuckerberg. I also would say everybody is accountable in some way and didn't nail it on the first try. I would, you could make that, you can make a claim about any social media platform that they didn't do enough fast enough. But they are starting to finally change their policies. They have banned certain accounts.

One of the policies that they put in place was that there would be they would change up the algorithm so that they wouldn't necessarily show you they weren't taking down the videos but they were rerouting your algorithms to show you different content okay so like okay this is how i think about it on instagram that you're not allowed to post a picture of a boob if you're breastfeeding you can't show a nipple that's a that's not allowed that's immediately banned your account can be banned and yet like oh it's freedom of speech if you're posting about like how you know any of this above anti-semitism and you know what i mean like i just think it's bullshit when people are like it's freedom of speech and it's like but then you show someone breastfeeding or just even

somebody somebody's boobs or menstrual blood and people are like oh god how can you show this to children it's like well look what you're showing to children anyway that's my christine 316 is what that bible verse was in case you need to check back um but no you were absolutely right i think there is a lot of uh hypocrisy in terms of what is censored and what is not. And thank you, I guess social media for doing something about it now kind of, but I'm still not super duper pleased, especially because before they started setting these policies, which is super duper recent, compared to what it should have been. These algorithms, Trevor Noah did a really good bit about this too, where he was saying that the algorithms were only a few clicks away, like with he didn't say this number, but you could pretty much

guess around like five clicks into video going down the rabbit hole, you ended up on QAnon content. Wow. And so just because if you're the way that he phrased it was like, if you're into alternate health, maybe you're anti-vax. If you're anti-vax, maybe you're conservative. If you're conservative, maybe you're into Trump. If you're into Trump, here's some q anon information so like so fucking quickly

within a an afternoon all of a sudden you're on q anon content and i mean that happened with that one woman i mentioned last time who she's an ex q anon member and she got in because she was into energies and crystals and frequencies and she clicked on a page that said you might like the great awakening and it's yikes you know it's how easy is that so uh because everyone has niche interests and q anon is so varied already anyone can fall in um it's really easy for the algorithm to access a lot of people all at once and extremism experts actually are shocked at how fast people are getting radicalized even like with like the knowledge of what the internet is they're still shocked at how fast people are getting radicalized

um since everybody was one of the big reasons i think and how this shows itself as very culty or how maybe even this could have just been a fringe conspiracy theory and i think what made it culty is that it is social media and the internet i think that might have been the the real kick in the crotch it needed i guess as i'm gonna call it um because during this pandemic i think the pandemic plus social media was the real firestorm here because everybody was already physically isolated from their social circles while they were learning about this stuff and half the job of a cult is fucking done you're already not near people yeah and like yeah you've got facetime and you've got texting and all this but you're not doing your regular hey let's go to

brunch oh by the way i saw this thing on the internet you're you don't have people you didn't have people consistently taking you off of the q anon ledge uh sure yeah like they normally would and like any sort of rationalizing or like like yeah pulling it back by the time you were telling people about it you hadn't seen them in months let's just put it that way or you're texting or you catch up every now and then but like you're not sitting down with people face to face and saying this is what i'm starting to believe. What do you think about that? What do you think? Right, exactly. And also, like, let's just be clear, you, me, everyone that probably listens to this, at least a very large majority of people who listen to this, suffer from either depression and or anxiety. And I would guess that a lot of people

who listen to this show who deal with that, like and i do have also experienced when you are depressed or when you have anxiety you fucking don't talk to anybody you just shut people out you don't text people back you don't it's oh it's really hard to find the social energy or the mental energy to socialize and if you're inside and your only way of interacting with other people is through facetime and all this and you're inside and your only way of interacting with other people is through facetime and all this and you're too depressed because of how the world is going you're not reaching out to anybody i'm telling you if we didn't have the podcast i wouldn't have texted you during this pandemic and it's nothing against you it's just i'm too fucking depressed i'm like so miserable i don't even i don't even get on a phone to call my doctor let alone no exactly people

my my own best friends back at home i barely talk to them and it's just because i have secluded myself and so even if you are talking to i'm saying what are you going to talk about you have a phone call and it's like well how are you dealing with the pandemic same old same old i mean it ends up just being like another draining bummer. Exactly. Like, what are you doing? You can't talk about your vacation to Bali. Like, so exactly. So my my argument or my the point I'm leading to, but I am tan tangenting, I guess, is that even if you aren't seeing people for brunch and catching up with them, and that's how they can talk you off the ledge.

One big argument could be, well, you can still text people and facetime them and this argument is me being like buddy i still don't fucking do that so like if i were secluded by myself and this is all i'm fucking reading and i'm i'm isolated i'm completely alienated from people whether or not i even meant for it to happen right and now i have this whole wild belief system that now when i catch up with my friend and they're like whoa you sound a little crazy all a sudden, it's very easy to kick them out because you weren't talking to them anyway. Right? So it's like, they don't get it like my online friends get it. Exactly, exactly. So I hope I didn't offend anybody with my jibber jabber about, you know, depression and anxiety. But I would like to think a lot of people isolating is very common. Yeah,

I would like to think a lot of people have been in our shoes before and and experienced something like that. So that just goes against the argument of like, you're still not socializing even with the very few resources we currently have. So exactly. So anyway, between there being all the social media, no interaction with people, at least in my case, there wouldn't be any interaction with fucking people. When you combine the accuracy of social algorithms, us being inside all day, completely secluding ourselves from people who aren't falling for the same media or information, people are becoming radicalized literally within weeks. So I talked about this within I talked about this in the first episode that I covered on QAnon. And I talked about this woman named Jessica Prim. Right.

That I covered on QAnon. And I talked about this woman named Jessica Prim. Right. And she was one of the crimes that QAnon has come to be responsible for. And Jessica Prim live streamed her arrest. She was looking for a Navy hospital ship. That she thought was where a bunch of like trafficked children were being held. Or something like that but and she also kind of started um she brought knives with her i guess to like defend herself or like

get the kids out however she needed to basically she ended up getting arrested people looked back at her at her posts and she there were threats about um hillary clinton and biden and because she had i mean she was fully radicalized thinking that she was going to be this lone wolf vigilante who was going to go save these children off of a ship and she and she was the one who was screaming at the cops the whole time about like have you heard about the kids I need to wake up and right right yikes goose cam so there was a west point study done on her and from her first interaction with q anon material online whether that was like the first post she saw or the first page she joined or whatever from that to her being fully radicalized was 20 days oh so from that to

her to this so crime was 20 days? Yeah. Wow. So from her just like being on Facebook and like joining a group like The Great Awakening to showing up on a Navy pier about to stab people to save children from a human trafficking ship, 20 days. Wow. That is unsettling. So I will say, I will add the caveat, I don't know anything else about her. There could have been mental illness involved. There could have been something. This is like a one person study.

So I don't know if there were any other influences that caused this. But it didn't sound like that. It sounded like everyone who knew her before was like, what the fuck happened to her? This is not what we're used to. I don't know enough about it to make a clear opinion. I will just say from what the study says, it is shocking. Yeah. So after the skyrocket and QAnon popularity, I talked about a Vice documentary I watched, I think it's actually a multi part series. I only watched one video, though. But they spoke to Angelo Caruso, who is the president of a media watchdog non-profit and they have been tracking q anon since the beginning and they the filmmakers asked angelo they were like so what do you think how many people do you think q anon has influenced lately like like what do you think the most recent number is and he said he's the literal president of this company that has

been watching q anon since the beginning and he was he said quote overall the literal president of this company that has been watching QAnon since the beginning. And he said, quote, overall, I would put it at about 10 to 15 percent of the population, which is 33 to 50 million people. And what is that number he's saying? Those are the people that have been affected by QAnon. So that doesn't mean they're completely like I believe in lizard people extremists, but they at least have their foot in the door. I'm assuming they at least have their foot in the door into QAnon or have been touched in some way by QAnon. He said 10 to 15% of the population, which would be 33 to 50 million, which is a ballpark guesstimate from the doc, from the from the filmmakers before they even spoke to him they thought it was somewhere around 30 million and for him to say 10 to 15 percent

and it's even more than 30 million is just wild how many million is it again sorry so in the u.s there's i i looked it up last night to double check it was like 328 million 329 million and they're according to this guy who's in charge of the media watchdog company 33 to 50 million people oh wow okay wow yeah so pretty terrifying um so here are the political consequences we could really get into this but it's going to be shorter than you think. So the the notion that conspiracy thinkers could gain significant political power is sadly not new all the way back to like the 1800s. People who were first joining the Freemasons thought that the Freemasons would rule the world one day or already did rule the world and they were just finding out about it. And that year, the Freemasons actually gained 10% of the House of Representatives. finding out about it and that year the Freemasons actually gained 10% of the House of Representatives so oh boy it's just uh yeah it was forever ago but it's just to prove that history repeats itself

and all you need is numbers and things start to change power starts to get shifted um so it's very reasonable to be worried that QAnon followers could gain significant political power in the future especially since some of those followers already have as as of this last election um the big one people have been talking about is marjorie taylor green who won the house seat in georgia um who uh yikes um that's all i'm gonna say that's all i'm gonna fucking say um and so many other candidates uh in this last election either like posted qAnon content, commented on QAnon content, just flat out fucking said they were for QAnon. Like a shocking amount of people. Not saying all of them ended up winning spaces in the last election, but it's enough people who were running felt emboldened enough to not be shy about it um

and so anyway i mean they were literally getting endorsed by literal politicians and shit this q anon group so um anyway when trump and his circle continued to not denounce q anon but instead give it supportive remarks or kind of flirt with the idea that they're real and he's for it or he was following and retweeting and liking posts his own campaign pictures there were some q anon uh propaganda in there um and there was uh another media monitoring group called media matters for america and they said that trump's re-election actually i don't know why this is surprising to me but trump's re-election relied on a lot of QAnon socials on social platforms to do a lot of fear mongering and spreading the good news, if you will, of what QAnon is. This is a quote that says, what happens when a nation's leader is conspiratorial?

People who are susceptible to conspiracy theories become manipulated and go into overdrive because a person in power finally represents them which is what makes this so dangerous because the more people with political power that feel free and safe of consequence to announce that q anon is fucking real all it's going to do is take all these other q anon people and be like well they said it's okay and look how far they are no one would take them seriously if they weren't telling the truth so anyway it just makes all of q anon think that all their work is doing is worth it they really are saving the world because look at how high they're climbing and in rank some people now actually a lot of ex q anon followers have said that if trump if trump had condemned q anon they would have gotten out which is pretty oh that blows that's just an argument for people who are saying the shitty comments of like well trump

didn't make q anon do anything they're their own people i hate that you know it's such a bullshit argument it's like saying like oh well the the cult members could have left the cult leader didn't make them stay exactly it's like saying oh someone could have left a an abusive relationship because i mean that's an extreme but you know i hate that same argument of like why didn't you get out yeah like why didn't they have the power to it's like you're ignoring the bigger issue of someone else's manipulating yeah exactly and uh just in case anyone out there wants to challenge me on this i'm not saying trump is a cult leader but i am saying a cult thinks trump is their leader so let's yeah and he's not saying he's not their leader and he's not saying he's not so somehow those things are different but i just want

to reiterate so anyway a lot of people have said yeah if he condemned q anon maybe they wouldn't have left but it would have certainly been a wake-up call because at least the person that they think is doing all this stuff behind the scenes saying no that's not true they would have at least been a little rattled then again a lot of people would have doubled down and been like oh he's that's what they want him to say forced to say that yeah or like that's part there's a code in there somewhere all this i also just want to say i'm not like comparing q anon members to abuse victims like no i did not there's a lot's a lot of self responsibility when you join something like QAnon. So I'm not saying like, oh, that's the same difference.

I guess I was just comparing the argument of ignoring like a bigger aspect of the problem. I did not read it that way. I got you. I don't want to get I don't want to get in trouble. No, I think there's the same narrative gets shoved into all of those situations, no matter how similar or not similar they are. Right.

There's always some critic who's like, well, why didn't they leave? And the answer to that is fuck you. That's the answer. So, I mean, okay.

Just to reiterate, Trump told them to be wary of the government, to not trust the media, the elections, a fraud, all, all these people he's telling that to already think he's their savior and is going to save the world so like he's just like left and right empowering them let's not fucking forget

the capital um where he incited violence from a whole group of people who were already vulnerable already angry already wanting to do something about it and just waiting for the go the green light yep and many people that at the storming of the capital were part of q anon you could see it on their signs on their clothes um let's remember that fucking auschwitz shirt that people were wearing which does have something to do with q anon um please listen to episode two um one of the people there that everyone saw on the internet uh who's a member of q anon is that shaman dude which wow is such a fucking insult to shamans um yeah also uh he is calling himself the shaman something right i i'm not thinking that

that's what he is and also in case you missed it i don't know if i mentioned this last week um but a lot of q and on followers also the one of the reasons they felt like they could go to the capitol or they can say all these things or they can join congress and do whatever they fucking want is because they think they are free from the law because one of their bananas theories is that in 1871 there was a law that turned the u.s technically into a corporation instead of a federal government and therefore any laws that were passed after that year are moot because technicality wise they it's okay okay okay and so they think since they don't have to follow any of the rules that

have been around since 1871 that's they can just do whatever the fuck they want and so it gives them a reason to if they're not happy with how things are do some vigilante work for the sake of all good um anyway so the aftermath of trump is that a lot of folks some of who were in congress because of all of his words like the election was a fraud you know don't trust that biden is you know or he didn't say don't trust biden is president that's what i think but the election is a fraud don't trust the media all this stuff him saying that has not only done damage to the people currently in q anon but just how that is going to spread throughout time now he trump has certainly left a legacy now and that he has almost approved the next several generations having to rebuild trust in media and government and all these things because

there's now a huge faction of people a staggering staggering percentage of people who believe him and now don't trust the government now they're gonna probably invalidate every time there's a new president unless it's the one they fucking want i don't know but so anyway he enabled a lot of people to not trust the government to deny biden to ignore the administration to incite violence or to incite vigilante justice at least and it's going to take a long time for people to break away from that thinking that he told them was correct um i mean imagine your god because some people he is the savior imagine your god telling you oh everything you think is right and everyone that's judging you for it is wrong and now you're stuck in this this world and for the next several i imagine generations you have to somehow wrangle yourself out of thinking that

no yes no it's your responsibility to do something about it and open the sheeple's eyes exactly so i mean he just like basically lit a fucking match and walked away and so travis view who i mentioned in the last two episodes who i'm very terrified of not uh doing justice in my research podcaster podcast, and there's two other people in that podcast. They're called QAnon Anonymous. Super excellent. Please go listen to them if you are fascinated and want to learn more.

One of his quotes about the now, I suppose, legacy, yikes, of what QAnon has left. Travis said, this is something that will be with us for at least a generation and probably longer, which is awful. And just to remind everybody,

in 2020, the FBI did say that QAnon poses a domestic terror threat. So at least it's official. Finally, somebody said it. Right. At least. But that's also, I'm pretty sure the first time

a conspiracy theory has become a fucking domestic terror threat. I don't know. I think that's the first time. conspiracy theory has become a fucking domestic terror threat. I don't know. I think that's the first time. It feels like that's the right information that I'm telling you. Okay. Anyway, so here we go on ways it's like a cult for 400 ding, ding, ding. So experts have classified QAnon's audience as comparable to religious cults.

I don't know if anyone has just like said oh yeah it's a fucking cult i'm not sure about that i have but i'm not an expert um some people claim that it's not really a cult yet it's more of a conspiratorial group think or a quasi-religious worldview because of its extreme some or its similarities to extreme groups sure i feel like that's all really dancing around what we all think and or at least what i think it's that we're really flirting with trying to not say cult that's what i'm thinking that's at least how it feels to me so again all of this is alleged no one this is all my opinions usually we are very very very neutral or try to be and not express our opinions but after three episodes

i would say a hundred hours of research i'm so fucking over this and i'm sorry that this is not proper journalism right now but i i don't know how to not think it's a cult after extremist experts are really shocked and everyone everyone who is dealing with this, who have lost loved ones, people who have left the group are all saying what's like, why would it not be a cult? Like, what's the definition of a cult that would make it any different from that? Like, to experts? So there I looked everywhere. That's actually, you know, in a way, it's an it's an answer to the question I don't think you were expecting. But I looked everywhere for conspiracy theory versus cult.

I just typed that in. Okay. And all that popped up, I didn't mention QAnon, all that popped up were pages about QAnon. Oh, wow. So I don't even know if there's an official, is there an official? I feel like at one point I just i just looked up cult it basically says like i wonder if it's too broad to be a cult do you know what i mean like because they all have different levels of belief i'm not sure because i i would say a conspiracy theory if i were if i

were to define it and this could be totally fucking wrong but i would say a conspiracy theory is when you have some fringe beliefs uh and you're not alone. There's a there's a group of you that all kind of follow these sure, little pieces of information that can confirm for you this belief that you have, but you're aware that it's not really for everyone. It's like a niche interest. Sure. And for me, and I'm sure there's a more extreme or less extreme, depending on who you are definition of that. But what makes it different to me from a cult is that a cult, there is a following where you, I actually wrote my version of how this becomes a cult.

Okay. In here. But just to answer the question, the difference, a quick difference between it is that you're not losing money, losing family, losing sanity, losing relationships, losing relationships losing your reputation like for me a conspiracy theory is time travel is real haha anyway moving on with my fucking life versus a cult is time travel is real and i'm gonna save the human race because of it like it's those are very extreme polar opposites but but if you think about like flat earthers there are some flat earthers who are so hardcore that like, that's true.

They have YouTube channels, they have like, they think everyone else is wrong. They think the government is against them. But I don't think I wouldn't consider like that a cult. I wonder if it's because they're not losing family and money because of it. Well, because I think a cult typically has like a like a leader, a leader or like a devotion to like a one. I feel like maybe it's too vague like there's so many different i wonder if because of q anon that's actually a great um that we didn't we

didn't plan this but that's a great um that's interesting i wonder if because of q anon there's going to become a third category there could be because like you said with flat earthers or you know some other people i'm not gonna like just shout out a bunch of people i don't agree with but i would say that a lot of them kind of fall into that gray space then don't they like yeah yeah and especially because a lot of them end up like uh converging so there are a lot of flat earthers who end up getting involved in anti-semitism and neo-nazism and there's a lot of overlap so i don't know like i wonder if it's just too broad to categorize maybe it's the honestly maybe the third group right now or maybe the gray space is that

conspiratorial groupthink or quasi-religious worldview sounds just as dangerous to me to be fair well the definition of the quasi-religious worldview is having features of extreme religious groups so having features and maybe religious groups. So having features, and maybe not some of them, but having having some but not all of them. So maybe that's what this gray space is. If that is the case, I could understand, I guess why people are putting QAnon into that category for the time being. Then again, I think it has promoted itself yeah no i can totally see what you're saying yeah so i can understand why maybe experts are hesitant to say something maybe it's just so new that they're trying to they're just fucking define it they're just frantic being like

what do we do to keep up yeah because it keeps changing and growing i mean this is within the last year that it's gotten like so massive i mean wow so anyway anyway i'm not saying it's any less dangerous than a call it might be more so but i'm just saying maybe it's more so because it's gotten like so massive i mean wow so anyway anyway i'm not saying it's any less dangerous than a cult it might be more so but i'm just saying maybe it's more so because it's like it doesn't even have a label it knows no bounds defined uh it's almost scarier so anyway that's what experts are saying i guess it's the the kind of middle gray space i personally think it has exceeded those limitations um so like a cult it lures you in with a horrible story of society that makes you want to, you know, help be a part of the change. In this case, it was human trafficking. So it makes you feel really important.

And to those who hate what's going on in the world right now, which there have been a lot of reasons in the last year, to hear someone saying we're trying to save the world at least sounds like a fun idea like at least sounds like you're in the right direction like most people could get on board with that like yeah sure in a out of context yeah we all want to save the world exactly especially when it's something as serious as human trafficking and totally and i i mentioned her last time but she's uh ex neo-nazi herazi. Her name was Shannon Foley Martinez, and she's been chiming in wherever she can on QAnon and saying, this is one of her quotes about everyone just wanting to do good and starting with the right intentions. Shannon said, quote, especially moms at home, when we start interjecting the idea that children are in danger, of course, moms in particular and women are like, how do we save the children? in particular, and women are like, how do we save the children? So when they start investigating, and when you're, and when you feel like you found the real facts that have been hidden from you, that's very alluring and seductive and feels like empowerment. So Travis view from the QAnon

anonymous podcast said, you can sit at your computer and search for information. And QAnon basically promises that through this process, you're going to radically change the country, institute this incredible, almost bloodless revolution, and then be part of this historical movement that will be written about for generations. And then another thing that Travis view said was QAnon, the QAnon community also often talks about alienation from family and friends, but they think these issues are temporary and primarily the fault of others. They often comfort themselves by imagining that there will be a moment of vindication sometime in the near future, which will prove their beliefs right.

They imagine after this happens, not only will their relationships be restored, but people will turn to them as leaders themselves who understand what's going on better than the rest of us. So I mean, I don't know if you watch the NXIVM docuseries, but that is so spot on of like, I mean, I don't know if you watch the NXIVM docuseries, but that is so spot on of like, if people are disconnect, if you're disconnecting from people, it's because they don't understand. And if they came to a meeting, if they came, they would understand and they would they would realize why I'm part of this or they would join too. I mean, it's that thinking of like, they just don't understand. They're like, exactly. They're not in the right head space yeah it's easy to yeah yeah i mean that's exactly and so from those three quotes i feel like it kind of hits a lot of the tenets of what a cult is sure i agree that you think you're saving the world from some evil you think that you are really special and part of this movement that's going to change the world and you have this community behind you that's telling you like oh if you alienate yourself from these people it's almost like it it soothes the burden of losing your family because you think it's only temporary because one day once everyone

has reached an ascension or a utopia or an enlightenment everyone will come back together and you don't have to worry about saying goodbye for now totally which that's that's what i took from it and npr interviewed travis and they said without trump does q anon fizzle and travis said without elvon hubbard did scientology fizzle oh i just got major goose cam that is not a good feeling that was the quote of the century to me. And he said, oh my goodness. He said, oh my gosh, once a movement like this grows to a certain size and once the believers in it become dedicated enough, it becomes self-sustaining and it doesn't need its founder or leader anymore.

And Scientology did that without fucking Facebook. So, oh, yeah, they did it without they did it for years without Facebook. Now, imagine if Scientology, if instead of Trump not being president now, imagine L. Ron Hubbard just died and scientology has the internet like i mean yeah and everyone's inside with nothing to do i mean it's how fast would everyone be a scientologist right now and so one of the fun aspects of a cult is that they also and this is where i don't know i guess it could also still be a little conspiracy theory yes but cult leaders in general they like to exploit anxiety with as much um ambiguity as possible to kind of

let you fill in the gaps yourself sure it's like that guy at the rajneeshi who's just took an oath of silence and everybody was like oh well i know he approves of the way i believe it because he wasn't saying anything it's what I like to call customized anxiety. Because it has a much more like alluring ring to me. Yeah. Get on board with that. Well, because like they're they tell you just enough to be afraid and then let you let your own paranoia fill in the gaps of how the worst thing possible could happen and what the best way you can help is. Yeah. of how the worst thing possible could happen and what the best way you can help is yeah um so i guess that's where i i hesitated earlier but i'm gonna go back to my original thought of i think

that's what makes it culty too and that like in terms of conspiracy theories you don't have this cus you don't have as much of this customized anxiety where everything kind of implodes to either the end of the world or uh it's your responsibility to get on board and help reach salvation or something like that. Anyway, so last week I said a lot of QAnon jargon and I said the week before too has a lot of religious tropes that maybe also lure in certain people because they're familiar with that jargon. They're familiar with everything happens for a reason or there being a plan for things. And during a time of intense anxiety, wanting similar explanations. So a lot of QAnon Christian jargon specifically, they've talked about the storm, the great awakening. And it's all reminiscent of a lot of people's upbringings. It's gotten to a point.

it's gotten to a point this is also where i think we have exceeded that gray space and gone into cult zone is because there are now churches starting about oh my gosh what so some followers have uh a religious level of worship enough of them got together and the thing that's creepy to me is that like a lot of people say that they joined because they i'm only speaking specifically about christians i did not see anything about any other religions i will say ironically a lot of jewish people have also joined um for very other reasons if you're orthodox jewish a lot of anti-vax stuff is how they got kind of sucked into this or um again a lot of jewish mothers at home were afraid of human trafficking my mother's afraid when i like stub my fucking toe so can you imagine if there was a

human trafficking ring she could help with so i mean like anyone anyone is able to get into this right i'm not trying to pinpoint christians so please don't take it that way but in terms of christianity a lot of people have said that they fell into it because it felt so similar to their current faith. And that is interesting to me because then those people or anyone in QAnon, but especially, you know, I'm talking about Christian people right now. They have such a religious level of worship to QAnon that it's replacing their own religion that got them into this to begin with. Or I will also say in a little bit, I'm going to talk about how there are a lot of Christians who because of their faith, they got out. So I'm not saying that Christianity is a reason you get sucked into QAnon. But a lot of their core beliefs that brought

them into QAnon or made QAnon feel alluring, they ended up like replacing their religion with this level of worship for Trump and QAnon and almost matching them to their God or their Bible, you know, so very interesting in that there, it feels like a replacement or they're they're equating them in some way. So anyway, yes, there is a church now, i'm assuming a lot of people who already had some sort of faith kind of a church seemed like a nice idea that you know also followed q anon beliefs and now it's kind of just becoming wow it's getting out of hand so there's an independent church in indiana that's doing this i would say that they're probably still selling themselves as oh we're like insert denomination here right right right we're a church

that happens to also all be q anon followers or we happen to also have faith in q anon or we also happen to have a belief system rooted in q so i don't think they're calling themselves a q anon church but i think they probably all like met on reddit or, if that's how it feels. So anyway, they, one person did write about this. They were, they joined the QAnon Indiana church services and said that it was originally on zoom.

Eventually it had to go to YouTube because it exceeded the number limit. Oh shit. Really? So many, so many people started going. Essentially it, they said, essentially it's a QAnon church.

It's an independent congregation. They were calling, I don't know if this is what the church themselves were calling them or if this is what the author was saying, but they were called Q-vangicals instead of evangelicals. Stop it. Stop it. Really an insult to evangelicals, I think, personally. So the service apparently began with them protecting the zoom room from from satan cool cool cool cool oh we forgot to do that today yeah well we did it every other day so we're probably safe today okay um and then they did a bible study and they incorporated q videos

into the sermon and not good where they also were trying they apparently took like a 15 minute breather or something where they also tried to decode Q drops or breadcrumbs. And one service, apparently they talked about Project Looking Glass, which is some sort of military time travel tech, which like I can get on board with that. But like, that's about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were preaching time travel can be, i took i think straight from the article so i i don't want there to anyone to think there was any plagiarism but after talking about project looking glass they preached that time travel can be explained by certain passages and then they

also said that you should stop listening to all media including like media that normal average everyday q anon people follow they would all media just wipe it out because it's satanic in some way so nothing is nothing nothing is safe except all of these q anon videos i think two of them that they were showing during this church were the two i mentioned earlier that got a lot of people involved the plandemic and fall cabal i think fall cabal was part of this service um so since all media might be controlled it's all therefore potentially satanic so just avoid it altogether and instead this church suggested a bunch of q anon youtube channels q anon influencers and their ministry apparently collects funds for

reclamation ranch which this is where like that it also starts to feel really culty because now you're taking their money in some way yep um and apparently reclamation ranch will is like us it helps rescue kids from the deep state or the oh god trafficking ring oh so again there you have that so uh switching gears i want to say uh here are other ways that there have been some like weird faith in how it became a little and how it became religious at some point. In 1831, there was a Baptist preacher, William Miller, who predicted the second coming of Jesus was going to be on October 22nd, 1844. It didn't happen. And his followers were crushed. Apparently, this day was called the Great Disappointment, which is hysterical to me.

Which like every day of 2020 was technically the Great Disappointment, which is hysterical to me. Which like every day of 2020 was technically the Great Disappointment. Oh my god. So these followers, they didn't lose faith, though, even though like a prediction had been proven wrong in front of them. But they didn't lose faith. And eventually these followers became Seventh Day Adventists. seventh day of endists and now there's 20 million worldwide which by the way by the estimates that that documentary was saying there's more q anon people in in the world than seventh day of endists oh yikes if i'm doing that right hopefully that's not true um so anyway yikes the there's one author named norman cone and he uh Pursuit of the Millennium.

And in terms of apocalyptic thinking, he compared QAnon to this level of blind religious faith. Yeah. And so this is a quote from him. This is a long quote, but it was all really powerful to me. The Seventh Day Adventists and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are thriving religious movements indigenous to America. Do not be surprised if QAnon becomes another, a.k.a. get ready for QAnon to become a religion. It already has more adherence by far than either of those two denominations. Adherence? Adherence?

Yeah, you said it right. Okay. It already has more adherence by far than either of those two denominations had in the first decades of their existence in the first decades and this is a one year wow people are expressing their faith through devoted study of q drops as installments of a foundational text through the development of q worshiping groups and through sweeping expressions of gratitude for what q has brought to their lives does it matter that we do not know who Q is? The divine is always a mystery.

Yeah, that's probably part of the appeal. Yep. It's like, we don't know who God is, but people follow God. Does it matter that basic aspects of Q's teachings cannot be confirmed? The basic tenets of Christianity cannot be confirmed. Among the people of QAnon, faith remains absolute. True believers describe a feeling of rebirth and irreversible arousal to existential knowledge they are certain that a

great awakening is coming they'll wait as long as they must for deliverance trust the plan enjoy the show nothing can stop what is coming okay woof i am freaked out officially freaked out and this is i i wrote here it was clearly two in the morning i wrote a quote by yours truly great so this is where i listed all of the ways that i feel like it is a cult and maybe now that we've had this conversation and you've made me rethink things maybe it just falls into quasi-religious movements or whatever they're starting churches and shit like i am way on board with the cult thing so this these are some of the ways that i let me just describe this and you tell me if i'm talking about a conspiracy theory or if i'm talking about a cult okay you very subtly get lured in in the beginning with false promises of doing good you begin learning the group's baseless secrets

that the world doesn't want you to know. You alienate yourself from others. You feel connected to something bigger than yourself. You have a leader or a savior and a community making you feel special for being awake to the truth. You feel united and fighting against evil. You're a part of saving the world. You believe in predictions of big things that are coming that you can help prepare for. You recruit others to save them, to help lead them to truth or to help lead them to salvation. Or you shun them if they challenge you too many times. You believe in a soon to be reckoning and then some version of ascension into utopia. When all that doesn't happen, you have so much faith in your belief system, you will

deny inconsistencies to explain away the disillusionment. utopia when all that doesn't happen you have so much faith in your belief system you will deny inconsistencies to explain away the disillusionment you're led therefore into an escalated and more extreme worldview because of these new beliefs you had to create to explain away your previous views you are willing to lose your loved ones for the cause so that's 14 or 15 we're in i mean listen there's oh and number 15 can be and also churches are being created because apparently this is akin to god yeah yeah and it's being described as like evangelist behavior which is this is frightening to me yeah and let me just say if you are someone who has been kind of flirting with the idea of q anon and you are here. I don't know. If you're listening and you might be part of QAnon and

maybe you're kind of being rattled. Let me just say this really quickly. No theory that you learned a few months ago is worth losing your family or your friends over. That's just that. So if you needed something, there's that information. And if you needed to hear it from somebody a stranger hi um there you go and this is where i now talk about the most important part of how to help someone get out um so the first real disillusionment has happened which is awesome um so far like the big first real the great awakening if you will uh just the one that's on the right side of history in my perspective, was that Biden became president. Right. And they were fucking wrong.

Despite all the promises and yeah. Yes. And that really shook some people. They couldn't process how the plan didn't happen and the plan that they were screaming about everywhere and the plan that they were shouting at all of us that we'll all see we'll all see it didn't come through so even anons on um when i say anons i mean anonymous people on eight kun eight kun i think someone did what that meant i did a lot of i saw a few answers but the overwhelming majority said that kun or kun is uh it means like a like a masculine it like means son like the son of four chan or eight chan or something well so chan means

like or is one of the it's either the feminine or the masculine and then kun is the other is the opposite okay so basically if you're saying four chan and four kun are like the opposite uh got it like this they described as brother sister channels brother sister i saw someone describe it as four christine and eight zandy or something like yeah because they're like sibling websites or like brother sister websites yeah that's fine so uh i don't want to be associated with 4chan thanks for the thanks guys uh so anyway members of anonymous that day, the day that Biden was inaugurated, they were all writing online with a lot of mixed feelings. And remember, the current owner of 8kun is Ron Watkins, Jim Watkins and Ron Watkins.

Even them on that day of Biden's inauguration, they wrote on their forum saying, quote, it's time to go back to our lives as best we are able. So even they were like, let's just, can we just fucking end this? Just like move on, yeah. Yeah. So this all comes, this is another, this is the new theory.

Remember, once you are challenged or something doesn't make sense, you double down and try to rationalize why it is the way it is. So there's this new belief for the people who aren't rattled and are like, really hunkering into like QAnon exists. And this was just part of the plan. I think this faction of QAnon people showed up after Biden's inauguration. But the new belief is that obviously, FDR replaced the gold standard by offering people to foreign investors. So humans were being traded with foreign investors.

Cool. Obviously. Great. Before this happened, though, I mentioned this a little bit in the last episode, but now I'm explaining it. Before this happened, before FDR replaced the the gold standard presidents were always sworn in on march 4th and those are the only presidents that are valid those are the only presidents worth paying attention to right so that means any president who hasn't been sworn in on march 4th we don't even count and that's why instead of trump being number 45 he's actually been

number 19 all along or he would have become 19. He was 18. I don't understand. OK, he 19. Think of him as 19 instead of 45. No, thanks. OK. And so this March 4th, this was all part of the plan.

They want you to think Biden won the presidency, even though they all fucking said the plan is Trump is going to become the president. Now they're saying, oh, the plan is trump is gonna become the president now they're saying oh the plan got edited or updated and so now biden's supposed to make you think he's president but now this march fourth oh boy the united states is going to revert back to its original form but like why like and how like what aliens are gonna with what project time travel like i don't get like why all of a sudden it's like more surprise like who's planning this i don't understand anyway apparently march 4th will now be the new reckoning where trump does become president and we realize the last couple months have been a total sham like two weeks that's in like less than two it's like in a week it's like

it's like the next time an episode comes out i think so no it's it's literally a week from tomorrow yeah okay well we'll know we'll know by then i guess but so everyone is now saying oh march 4th that's the new plan that's the new plan you're right that's just gonna keep adapting when that doesn't happen they're gonna say oh the next election it's gonna happen like it's just gonna keep getting yeah well luckily this was the first real disillusionment or as I'm going to call the Great Awakening. Because I think that's just comedy gold there. It's pretty clever. That even devout QAnon followers hesitated because they were like, whoa, like that.

I don't buy it. Like something is weird. I was promised, promised, promised this whole time. And now there's this random plan about because FDR like sold gold and humans. So like a lot of people are starting to kind of wake up. That's good. Yeah. So that's really nice.

And right now they're, God, I wish I wrote. I have the link, but I don't know which link it was that talked about this. I don't remember which article it was, but. Oh, oh, I have it right here. Perfect. Okay. I don't remember which article it was, but oh, oh, I have it right here. Perfect. Okay, so it was a 538 article. And it was basically they're talking about right now, because people are kind of starting to get rattled, or at least the first real wave of people who are waking up from QAnon are starting to show themselves. opportunity we've had to potentially pull doubting believers out from the conspiracy before one of three things happen. So there's one of three paths after Biden's inauguration that will happen for QAnon people. The first one is unshakable faith, where now they're doubling down more than ever.

And again, when people say like, well, once your big plan failed, why don't you leave? That's kind of like when cults say like, oh, the UFOs are coming to get us and failed why don't you leave that's kind of like when cults say like oh the ufos are coming to get us and then they don't show up you know it's like and actually i'm not even going to say cults in that case i'm going to say a quasi-religious blah blah because i feel like that's fair and more open especially with like seventh day of vendus like they're the great reckoning didn't happen and then they became seventh day of vendus and they're not a cult as far as i know so right right right no i see what you're saying. Anyway, I don't want to put that title on in that spot. I don't want to put a title. But so it's a it's a really good point in that, like,

in most cases, people think there was a quote, a prophecy comes after the group has already been established. So when believers find these holes in their beliefs it's easy to fill the gaps and since biden was inaugurated now everyone's saying oh well this was a plan trump's going to be president march 4th also the inauguration is fake a lot of people have been saying that the bible that he swore on was fake which like even doesn't even have to be a fucking bible um but okay so a unshakable faith is the first one the second one one is Doubting QAnon, which is what we want. That would be great. Yep.

I want option two. Basically, they could finally get back in touch with their loved ones. People are starting to look at their past inconsistencies. A lot of ex-QAnon members have said what got them through it or what made them wake up was they found threads online, which if you see this thread online i encourage you to retweet that shit in case it happens for someone else um where these threads were listing all of the failed q and on predictions all at once oh interesting so i imagine like yeah usually if you can see an inconsistency and you can plan out ways to fill the holes if you see all of those predictions that failed at one time you can't possibly fill all those holes pretty powerful at one time especially when all of them are such wild theories

you can't come up with that stuff right away and it'll startle you right so anyway so that's one thing uh i mentioned earlier a lot of people who were uh specifically christian because i didn't see this anywhere else but a lot of christ Christian QAnon followers said that one of the reasons that they were able to get out is because someone challenged them by not challenge them, but ask the simple question of, I think you're holding Q to the same level you hold God, or I think you're holding these breadcrumbs and these hints and the secrets of the world, you're holding them to the same standard as you would the Bible. And that's the 10 commandments. So yeah, and so that woke a lot of people up and they were like oh this is wrong you

don't hold anything to the same standard as god interesting okay so congratulations to the people who have gotten out there is one guy he i mentioned him last time he did a reddit ama as an ex q and unfollower this is a quote of his that said it was how he got out it was a couple of posts made by q on the chans oh this is the guy i was talking about when some people started waking up because they realized that they think q is like a baby boomer who's like oh yeah right he's not good at punctuation yeah so this is one of those cases and this this was a quote of that it was a couple of posts made by q on the chans that uh seemed highly suspicious because of how ignorant they were to technology q posts often had weird

syntax as originally a code and the way he writes some people have read into it being clues but this guy saw it as an older person trying to use the wrong tech jargon basically he said one morning q claimed to have shut down seven fbi supercomputers named after the seven dwarves no less via satellite hacking and all of the rabid fans ate it up claiming it was true because their internet had been running a little a bit faster now oh come on uh i realized that most of the q believers i had seen were boomers with no idea how technology works or people my age with no idea about how computers operate. That day I googled QAnon debunked and got out. So it was Wow, interesting.

So it's like, no matter what angle, like if you find that angle, that's like, huh, yeah, that speaks to you. Interesting. I also think it's interesting that it was kind of a combination situation for him where it was like, I kind of think q anon is a boomer and also now that i'm thinking about it all of his followers that i know of are also boomers and they're all talking about how they know for sure a satellite was hacked like it's like okay and this isn't to like totally rip on boomers some of you are very perfectly digitally literate and some of us young and some of us are not generations are great are shitty at tech too so it's not like a one-all right so the other third option other than unshakable faith doubting q or the third one is becoming way more extreme which is terrifying let's not do that i would like that one off the table completely so for a lot of loyalists

biden women winning uh has them super angry in the wrong way at the wrong people and they're slipping even deeper into fringe beliefs to try to explain it away a lot of these people probably feel really powerless because the thing they were promised by their own group they are feeling betrayed they don't trust their own community and usually if you don't trust you feel like you can't trust your current fringe community you just find another so now you're this one set of beliefs you already have that are very extreme you're now going to just marry into another set of extreme beliefs and other extreme groups by the way especially white nationalists apparently they have noted that these

people are currently very vulnerable. They feel betrayed by their own and they're eager, the white nationalists and other extreme groups are very eager to recruit these new already manipulated people. Since a lot of these people all find each other on more conservative right wing social platforms. It's just the same situation all over again, where the internet is at your disposal. A lot of people are looking for answers all over again where the internet is at your disposal a lot of people are looking for answers all over again they're just frustrated they feel betrayed they want someone to listen to and now not only are they just talking on like facebook and twitter where there's a whole bunch of different kinds of people to reach out to but now they're reaching out on

i'm speaking specifically about like parlor and gab and all that um not to totally call them out but those apps existing now gives confused extremists a concentrated group of people who are more likely to take them in um and that happens to be the platforms that people with some really alt-right opinions are on yeah so since all these groups are just like it's just a breeding ground for extreme beliefs at this point even the like quote vanilla conservatives on these pages are getting wrangled in so like it's just you're it's just slowly sucking people in everyone i would imagine has at least heard of q anon if you're on that on those platforms i don't know i'm not on those platforms but i would imagine there's compared to like i don't know i'm not on those platforms but i would imagine

there's compared to like i don't know others i would imagine there's buzzfeed i would imagine there's a lot of people involved in q anon on those platforms right for the picking um and basically when they decide to start working together these you know whether it's a i'm just using white nationalists over and over again but for example white nationalists if they decide to start working together with q anon people who feel like they're betrayed or they're coming up with even more reasons to explain away trump not becoming president whatever it is once they all band together if they were to start protesting a former q anon member said it will make januaryth look like a joke, which is the storming of the Capitol. Yeah.

Yeah. So the notion that the storming of the Capitol is just the beginning because people are now going to really band together now that Biden has become president. So that terrifies me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And despite all that, the people who who are leaving who have chosen option two we welcome you we embrace you welcome back and advice from former members of q anon and cult recovery professionals they are all pretty much saying the same thing um and let me take this moment to say people have lost their families they've lost their friends to QAnon. They feel like QAnon has been chosen over them. Those who are lost are isolating themselves. Thus, they're falling deeper and deeper into the belief because they're relying on people who aren't their loved ones for social interaction. devastating people which is why i consider it a cult one of the many reasons that i listed um there's also a fear for a lot of people that if this starts falling into more violent or extreme factions q anon could very quickly become physically harmful to people and their families fred brennan or the guy who created uh 8chan and then he ended up selling his website to jim watkins where q anon now is running he even said like i'm i'm paraphrasing but he said like i'm terrified

that one day like someone from q anon is going to like kill their children for the sake of like saving them from people or like i mean there's it is really terrifying how fast it can get once you've incited a little violence. And people could start doing real damage because they think they're doing it for the better good or the greater good. Yeah. So it's not just losing family members. It's being worried about their mental and physical safety. Yeah. And there's additional pain for a lot of people who are now leaving QAnon.

But before they did, they recruited their own loved ones into it with them. And now they have to not only walk away from this whole belief system, but also the people that they love. And they have to deal with the guilt of bringing them into that group. And now they're walking away from them after bringing them into it. What's more difficult is that stubborn QAnon followers, even if they might kind of start doubting, they will be afraid to admit that they were wrong

due to the amount of time that they have invested in this, due to the sacrifices they've made for this, especially during a pandemic when this has been some people's 40-hour work week is just learning about QAnon. And the overall suggestions from former members and psychologists and cult experts, they're all basically the same. And before I say these things, I want to give my own very unofficial,

I am not an expert opinion. If you, for some reason, have lost somebody to QAnon, If you, for some reason, have lost somebody to QAnon and your choice has been to walk away completely and your boundary that you've set for yourself is to just not have a relationship with them, you are 100% valid in that. You are 100% valid in it being too fucking much. Maybe to you they are too gone. It's just not worth. It's not your responsibility. it's not worth your sanity um you know if there's if the options are both of you go down trying to get them out of q anon or only they're damaged and you can move from this move on from this you are valid uh the only reason i say that is because the overwhelming majority of recommendations is that you stay in touch with them in some way.

And I don't want anyone listening to this feeling guilty. Sure. You should not feel guilty. This is just a suggestion, just a suggestion from other people. So experts are saying, first of all, don't if you are still talking to them, don't challenge them because they're just going to dig their heels in don't try to show them evidence because you're just showing them evidence from sources that they were trained not to trust or indoctrinated not to trust and if anything you're just proving to them that you're part of the problem and they can't come to you because you are falling for media they if if you show them credible sources to us and it's and

it's not credible to them they're just going to end up running further into the QAnon community because they need to go bitch about the experience to other people who get them, you know. So just try not to have logical arguments with people who are not being logical. One quote is to try to make rational arguments is not going to work because they're not thinking rationally. Another quote is I don't think they can be reasoned out of beliefs they weren't reasoned into. So instead, what you can do is continue loving them. I will add the caveat of if that means from a distance, great. If your boundary is I love them from afar, awesome. If you can or if you're willing, check in on them.

Awesome. If you can, or if you're willing, check in on them. Many former members have said, have described being in QAnon like a drug, which can be offensive, I imagine, to addicts. So I'm not trying to be insensitive to that. But a lot of former members have said it feels like a drug because you're learning these clues, you feel the sense of entitlement and power. And once you've figured out one clue, and you've figured out you've decoded it and now you have a piece of the puzzle that's going to save the world you need more and more and more and more interestingly experts have also compared leaving cults to those with histories with addiction at least in terms of uh one of the big things is isolating yourself from your family and people who can help you so one of the things that experts say is focus on their higher selves. So start with where their good intentions ended. So be like, I agree that human sex trafficking is

terrible. I would love to, I would love to help you with that. Or I'm so happy that, you know, that's a big, important value to you. And then just redirect the sources they look at, at least like show them a couple links to other human trafficking foundations. And so it's not necessarily what CNN is saying, what NBC is saying, what New York Times is saying, just, hey, since you're really into human trafficking and saving children, really into human trafficking, but since you're really saving people from this, here are some other foundations you can donate to or work with while you're also in QAnon. And hopefully that gives them steps into talking to other people away from the movement.

That sounds real hard because I have some relatives far, pretty far removed in QAnon. And they, some of them are very, very cruel and racist and angry. So even that far, I'm'm not you know what i mean like no i totally get it in that i saw a lot of that in uh rebuttals to this advice of like i can try but like that that's not a simple fix so if they are let's say early on in the movement and easier swayed maybe that's a good or if it's somebody that you know well enough to be like i know where their heart is or i know because obviously like some of the people i'm thinking of like they were always racist it's not like oh suddenly they became you know that was always a

part of their personality so i'm not i don't want to be involved with him anyway right right yeah if you're like oh my brother uncle mom or whomever like i know that they're being skewed or yeah yeah yeah they have a different heart yeah um that makes more sense yeah another one is again i said this earlier but if they are religious in some way maybe see if they're where what pedestal they're putting q on um which is how a lot of christians left also remind them of shared experiences and memories, because one of the things that I didn't mention earlier, but would like to tack onto my list of ways this is like a cult is because it removes you from your prior identity before Q and R or before a whatever

belief system you're in. And so remind them of memories, but only think of them as your sibling or your friend or your schoolmate or back in college when you were roommates remember this wonderful time together and it kind of takes them out of thinking about q anon for one fucking second which chances are if that they're that deep in it's all they're thinking about anymore and so it's just a good time to remind them that they do have an identity outside of q anon that they may have abandoned so yeah yeah um another one which is like kind of like in terms of advice because i feel like it's like what's a great way to you know be celibate not have sex

and abstinence like it's like it feels icky it feels like kind of um hey the best way to get out of this is to not even start from the beginning but one of the big suggestions is focus your attention on what q anon is and learn as much as you can so that you don't accidentally get sucked into it too and it's like i get it but i want to know how i can help other people so sure anyway to help yourself learn as much as you can and hopefully you won't be swayed while you're talking to q anon members and, to help yourself learn as much as you can. And hopefully you won't be swayed while you're talking to QAnon members and trying to help them. Right. I just I wanted to add that in. But I feel like that's kind of like a counterintuitive one. It's like, okay, yeah, I get that one. Sure. Also, you can focus your attention on those who have yet to be like initiated into QAnon. And

if you see people online kind of being swayed or lured in, and they're clearly brand new and kind of just open to it, step in on those comments and say something quickly and like redirect them to actual sources before they think that those sources aren't credible. And I mean, it only takes a few weeks, apparently to get completely radicalized. But if you see someone, to get completely radicalized but if you see someone hopefully on like day one and there's time to reroute their thinking do it and try to figure out what loved ones fears and needs are before a cult understands them better than you understands them better so if you know that they're just like missing out on social interaction try to like do some like weekly movie nights or some shit like i mean that's a really small example But if you can figure out what their anxiety is, and what answers they're looking for, try to find a way to get them those answers or fulfill those psychological needs before they're taking extreme measures.

from media, that's a great way to offer a resource because you're not telling them what not to believe. You're just telling them what to not really look at for five minutes. Also, don't expect them to change overnight. You got to be patient if you're willing to put in this work. Also, I did not do enough research on this, but one person who is a former QAnon member says their best tip is to, when you're asking questions instead of accidentally challenging them and making them dig their heels in ask them questions with street epistemology techniques which apparently is a conversation tool to help understand one's beliefs I feel like it sounds controversial to me because one I don't know enough about it so I don't know if I should be really sharing that information without being totally enlightened on it. But it feels like if you were like someone preaching on the sidewalk, how you can lure people into your way of thinking. So it feels a little icky without me knowing too much about it. But I want to give it a shout out because former QAnon members say that it's what got them out and how they've been helping other people. So if it works, it works, I guess. Just hopefully you're using it for the right reasons. Also, be willing to listen

if they do start addressing their doubts. Don't come at them with facts. Don't just listen. Just shut up and listen because they're telling you their feelings. They trust you. The last thing you want to do is, you know, make them second guess their trust in you because then they'll just run right back into it. And then list this one i liked a lot list the classic tactics of what a conspiracy theory is um just to kind of remind them like hey this kind of aligns with what you're going through right now sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory if you'd like if they're really extreme and you want to list my things where i said how it feels like a cult maybe just like test the waters but you could list the the early tactics of a conspiracy theory is that there is a false

authority figure there's a an appeal to one's anger and prejudices and an urgency for a claim an urgency of a claim that like something's coming or you know there's something really bad going on and we need your help um so this is so fucking cool, by the way. And this goes out to everyone, not just QAnon members, but to spread awareness of tactics of a conspiracy theory. There was a team. I think this was the same guy who gave information from Cambridge earlier, Professor Vander Linden. His team, to spread awareness of conspiracy theory tactics made an online game that anyone can play. And it's called Go Viral. And it teaches how fake news spreads itself and

how quickly it spreads itself. So it's called Go Viral with an exclamation point if you want to go play it. Cool. And so it's just another easy way to like, insert yourself without stressing people out. Also, I think this is hysterical a former cult member said just tell them to do their own research so i think i i see the dark humor in that obviously they're doing other research at the moment so they're a little busy but if someone does show any doubts just be like hey even if these sources even if you don't think they're credible maybe just give them a read and just like, if you just kind of just see what you think about it. And then one of the things I think is super cool, maybe this has always been happening in terms of helping people escape cults, but this is the first time I'm seeing it.

So it feels really special to me is that a lot of former cult members have been like rallying together in terms of QAnon. And they have been trying to now monitor QAnon threads so they can help pull people out. Oh, that's great. Other ex cult members have been coming out specifically in support and to give resources for people as they're leaving QAnon. When you say like ex cult, are you saying all cults or just QAnon? No, sorry. So I've been saying like former or ex QAnon members when i mean just q anon but this is like generally x cult members oh wow okay interesting cult members have been coming together to help out q anon i don't know if this is like maybe it's just the sources i read but it seemed like most of them were former moonies wow interesting but so they started a hashtag called I got out.

And so you can look at that hashtag and see all these people's stories. And like I said, they are going and following QAnon pages to like insert themselves in early enough to sway people against QAnon. Another person who's really big in trying to help people get out is an ex QAnon member named Jatarth Jadeja.

And he spoke to Anderson Cooper, where he literally apologized to Anderson Cooper for everything he used to think because he was like, all the way in like there are blue interdimensional reptiles and Hollywood eats babies. He literally said on his show, actually, Anderson Cooper said the quote, did you believe high level Democrats and celebrities were worshiping Satan and drinking the blood of children? And he said, Anderson, I thought you did that. And I would like to apologize right now. I apologize for thinking that you ate babies. Whoa, what a statement. of like feeling like you came full circle like you got to literally tell anderson cooper anything but also like it's got to feel good that he's trying to do his part and is absolutely also getting to apologize to people but so he is going around and like doing like from what i'm i guess a press circuit in some way because he's been everywhere and the research i did trying to get people out or tell his story and And in terms of support groups,

there's not a lot yet just because I think QAnon is so new, but there is one that has been offered. I think it was a support group for just people who have lost loved ones to cults in general. It's called Antidote. And I saw someone on a Q forum suggest Antidote.

I don't know anything more about that, but please check that out if you have lost someone. Also, ironically, the place where it all began is doing the most right now because a lot of the sources people are getting

for relieving the fact that they've lost ones to QAnon is Reddit. And there are two subreddits specifically where anytime I looked up like how to get people out these were the two that kept getting shout outs the first one is recovery but recovery is spelt with a q r e q u o v e r y and then the other one which i would say is the biggest and i would say currently the most influential in terms of q anon support groups right now is q anon

casualties um and it's a it's a subreddit dedicated to people who have lost loved ones or are in the process of losing loved ones um in june so three months into q anon kind of getting really popular only 3 500 people were in the group and now it is at 137,000 wow and what's interesting is when I planned on covering this part of the topic last week there were 5,000 people less oh wow so in the last week 5,000 people have joined yeah still growing so I would very much suggest that I've seen a lot of posts in there where people are like because I lost my family you're every you're my've seen a lot of posts in there where people are like, because I lost my family, you're my family. Like, a lot of people are relying on QAnon casualties as almost a source for, like, how do I do this?

How do I do this? Like, I can't talk to my mom anymore. Like, what do I do? So it's been, it looks like it's becoming a really wonderful place in terms of an actual community. So please go check those out. really wonderful place in terms of an actual community. So please go check those out. I am so sorry that this was so long. But I do want to say that even though this was three episodes and several hours long of information that one of the reasons I covered it so intensely is because it is shocking how many people that listen to this podcast are affected by this. I only know

because of Tea Time Tuesday, which I guess in its own is like a little blessing in disguise, because I became aware of this. I don't think I would have cared as much or realized that I should care as much had I not seen every week people writing in being like, I just lost my dad, I just lost my brother, my best friend is in QAnon, I don't know what to do. And so i have had a little bit of a window or a little light shed on it to me and if you are out there listening to this podcast which there are many of you if you have lost loved ones you're not even alone in the and that's why we drink community there's a lot of you so please don't feel like you can't find each other and and take

care of each other because this is a really really terrible thing and i identify it as a cult others don't have to but just from dangerous no matter what you label it it's dangerous it's not this isn't cute so the end that is cute on i never ever want to talk about it again q isn't cute that's the end we're not talking about q ain't cute q ain't cute anyway holy shit i'm so sorry christine but i just wanted to do everyone a justice and like not just kind of like no i can't believe it's over it's like been such a it's finally over for all of us wow wow i'm good job wow you did it i'm so proud of you i did it i can't wait to go back to talking about ghosts next week

everyone this was really fucking awful and like i i'm sitting here complaining that i had a Thank you. I'm so proud of you. I did it. I can't wait to go back to talking about ghosts next week, everyone. This was really fucking awful. And like, I'm sitting here complaining that I had to talk about it for three days of my life. And there are people out there living this. So I can't imagine. It was, for me, this is the most entitled part of it, is that like, I was so exhausted and mentally drained from doing research. I can't imagine having someone in my

life going through this. Or having to do the research because it personally affects you. Yeah, that's a good point. But you did a good service. You did a good thing. Thank you. My goal is to pull one person out of QAnon. That would be a very delightful, if that's the one thing that ever came out of And That's Why We Drink, beautiful. Yeah, agreed. Agreed. And I would have just been sitting here drinking and watching it happen. And I'm fine with that. Don't spit on the microphone. You picked a really bad time. Sorry. The biggest gulp of water in my mouth. Okay, maybe you picked a bad time. Okay. Okay,

you're right. You're right. You're right. okay you're right you're right you're right i'm closing i'm closing my q anon notes it feels so nice oh i bet oh my gosh thank you so much for being so patient no that was fascinating uh i ate a muffin so i'm feeling better oh good i love when you feel better and jazzed up oh i love a good jazzed christine i know we're just i was gonna say my little jazz cucaracha god well we're approaching dinner time so i'm getting i'm getting antsy hungry um okay let's see so i have a story for you today this is called the snowtown murders aka the bodies in barrels murders is how most people know it bodies in barrels oh okay yeah i mean it's an australian story so it's definitely more popular there a lot of people uh case file covered this

and um it was a very early episode for them but uh he was saying he's always known it growing up in australia so it seems to be something that's more well known over there all right but this story was recommended by a listener named Jacqueline Bremner. So thank you, Jacqueline. I'm sure other people have emailed it in, but that's the one we saw. So May 9th, 1999 is where we're going. We are in South Australia. And I also want to add there are a lot of people and moving parts in the story.

OK. Like it got confusing writing it down so please ask me if you're like who's that again or which one's that because it's very very there's a lot of people and i tried to make it as simple as possible but just let me know if you're confused about anything got it so got it got it the first two characters here are david johnson who's 24 years old and his stepbrother jam Jamie Vlasakis, who's 19. They are on their way to pick up an old computer. So as they arrive in a small town called Snowtown, which for context, in 2006 had a population of 405, so very small town.

They pulled up outside an old brick building and went through a side door. an old brick building and went through a side door obviously thinking he's there to pick up a new computer david never expected that instead he would be the final victim of a brutal series of murders called the snow town murder oh shit okay yikes it would be about two weeks later that police arrived at said building and the city of snow town's reputation would be tarnished forever to the point sorry i thought you were leaning in to say something i was just gonna say oh boy for the millionth time so i just decided to hold on to it oh boy oh boy is right so the town got such a bad reputation because of this that locals requested to change the town's name from snowtown to rose town uh spoiler alert the request was rejected so it's still snowtown oh Oh, okay. Although the story ends in Snowtown, it begins in Adelaide, which is about a two-hour drive south.

So we're going to go there real quick. And this begins in 1992. So you find in Adelaide 22-year-old Clinton Trezise. And Clinton had a tough childhood growing up, so he spent a lot of time hopping around foster care for a number of years and by 1992 he had been fully settled in adelaide and had recently made two friends oh now this yeah cute so this is where things get iffy online as far as the identity of people the the gender identity of people pronouns it gets very convoluted so i just want to be clear and upfront here that some podcasts have gotten um have had

to take their episodes down because they were um i don't know the right word confronted about the way they approach the story so i'm going to try and do my best to cover this the most respectfully I can. It's also very unclear. This was the early 90s and there wasn't like Facebook. So terminology is all fucked up? Maybe. But there wasn't like any way for me to know how these people identified in 1992 because they weren't posting on LiveJournal or like sharing their pronouns on Instagram or anything. So it's mostly through the media,

which obviously we know we can't necessarily trust how the media represents people in the LGBTQ community as far as identity. So it's very iffy. I'll smack you around a little bit if something sounds out of line. But the problem is that we don't know because that's the issue. We don't know if they identified one way or another.

Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. Well, then I guess then I mean, if you're going off of sources like the only sources that we've got, then I mean, there's nothing else you can do. So, OK, here's what I'll tell you. So there was this friend that Clinton made named Barry Lane. That's what they were known as. However, they often went by Vanessa and were known to dress as a woman. However, he called himself a gay man.

However, a lot of times he wanted people to call him Vanessa. So it was very unclear how some people used Vanessa, some people used Barry, I I mean in his own life so it wasn't totally clear I'm gonna use they them pronouns because it's so up for debate that I'm sure I don't want to decide for them sure I mean yeah it sounds like I don't know I don't even know what it sounds like I might right it's so confusing and there's another person in here as well with the same kind of background and so I'm gonna use they them pronouns for them as well because what a headache oh but i i get it i get why you're stressed but also like yeah i'm sorry you have to go through this but it's a headache because because you want to do the you want to do them justice you want to identify them properly of course but it's also a headache because there

are like 40 people in this story so it's not like i see oh the two main characters are you know they them it's like we have you know there are like 40 different people involved and so i'm trying to keep track of well also in terms of like political correctness too like you want to make sure that you're not accidentally dead naming them while trying to let me know who you're talking about because nobody gave you the right information on what name they would prefer right and the last thing i want to do is use someone's dead name. But again, that's mostly what every article and source uses. So it's like I either have to commit to using one name or the other.

I'm going to use Vanessa because that is the one that you'll hear more about this. But I'm going to go with well, for most of these people anyway, I use their last name. So that doesn't even really become an issue. Oh, good. But I'm going to use they them pronouns to just make sure I'm not, you know, deciding for anybody. Sure. So I just want to put that out there. So Lane, Barry slash Vanessa, depending on which source you read, Lane and Robert Wagner.

Now, they're they're a couple. So Clinton befriends this couple. Lane and Wagner is usually what I end up calling them. Last names. So they've been in a relationship since 1985 when Wagner was 13 and Lane was 28. Yeesh. Oh, we found our controversial part here. Our one controversial part.

Yeah. No. This is the smallest element of this whole story that's controversial. Yeah it okay 20 23 and 28 13 13 and 28 so yikes oh that's like you dating a 13 year old i got it it's it's that's a tough one to defend that's a tough one to defend yeah um so while wagner was not super open with his sexuality and orientation, Lane was. According to Killer Queen's podcast, Lane was known to dress in women's clothing and go by the name Vanessa. But there was little information about whether they identified as a woman. There's debate online about the pronouns.

But the website Trans Lives Matter uses they them pronouns. So I think that's just what I'm going to go with. Nice safe bet. I would say, right? I would say so. Respecting them the most. I would think if anyone went by multiple names, you just didn't know what the best one was, just go by they, them and last names and it's just easier.

Right. It's just, you know, rather than risk like totally disrespecting them. Yeah, totally disrespecting them. Exactly. So what Clinton, who is the guy who just befriended Lane and Wagner, what Clinton didn't know is that Lane and Wagner were actually members of a group of social misfits led by a total psychopath. Oh, you had me in the first half. I was like, social misfits? Social misfits makes it sound really innocent and like the freaking little rascals or something but no it's it's a lot more sinister than that got it a lot more sinister than that so in august of that year lane and wagner invite

clint to their friend's house now this friend is john bunting and uh spoiler alert he's the psychopath okay got it is he actually a psychopath uh that is what the sources tell me all right okay it is not me making up a it's not me saying oh what a psycho it's it's a legitimate term being used uh wow we're really just like almost offending everyone today well i mean a psychopath is a person like i'm not like saying oh he's just a psycho i mean it is an official terminology um so yes that's john bunting so got it lane and wagner invite clint to their friend john bunting's house on waterloo corner road in the adelaide suburb of salisbury north so clinton is sitting in the lounge of the house when suddenly someone attacks him from behind repeatedly hitting him on the back

of the head with a shovel not only fracturing a skull but killing him on the back of the head with a shovel, not only fracturing a skull, but killing him on the spot. Oh. So welcome. Welcome to the neighborhood. Wow. John Bunting, Lane and Wagner drove his body north, buried him in a shallow grave. And it was a couple of weeks later that Clinton's sister, Sherry, filed a missing persons report with police looking for her brother.

So she files a missing persons report for her brother and uh turns out the reason that these folks decided to murder clinton is because they believed he was a pedophile okay all right okay okay in i told you this is a big one this is a landmine episode you were right you were right i was like pulling my hair out earlier trying to make sure i covered all my bases um so in conversations after his murder his murderers remembered him by the name as happy pants and to be clear they thought he was a pedophile believed he was a pedophile nobody ever gave any sort of evidence that he was a pedophile this isn't like got it oh they found out that he was and so they killed him this was like they decided he was just like random based on hearsay just like yeah you'll see why i

mean it all kind of comes out where that thinking comes stems from you can probably guess but anyway i have a hunch but yes let's go on so if you haven't guessed it which i'm sure you have clinton's murder was orchestrated by our resident psychopath john bunting uh this was the guy whose house they'd all gone to and john lived with his wife veronica at the house on waterloo corner road where clint had been murdered john was someone who had always not shockingly seemed to have a pretty dark side to him growing up he was known to collect chemicals and submerge insects into them to watch them die oh as well oh cute as well as dig tunnels under his childhood house until his dad figured out what he was doing and stopped him because it was dangerous but that's not something

like i would do dig tunnels under the house yeah i want to know what the end goal was before i judge him i'm like okay valid point like was there treasure where are we doing like that sounds fun are we doing a little like escape room situation like you know or is it like an escape room situation that i don't want to be a part of because no thank you yeah so as a teenager he got into nazism and that is where his hate of the queer community or as he put it gays and pedophiles began well so that is where the whole kind of angle of oh i'm deciding who is a pedophile and who's not and then i will do my vigilante justice and kill them right where that all came and it's always a great place to

start when you compare the two as one and say gays and pedophiles basically the same you know same thing same difference right start exactly so at age 22 uh bunting worked in a slaughterhouse and reportedly bragged about slaughtering the animals saying that's what he enjoyed the most uh it was at the house on waterloo corner road where he met his neighbors lane and wagner uh-oh and lane and remember lane and wagner yes i'm saying uh-oh like why or is he he doesn't like them right he's not gonna like them no they already murdered someone together oh right right right clinton together okay got it they that's what part of the that's part of the thing the bigger issue yeah so they are already friends but this is just telling how they met so he met his neighbors lane and wagner and

they started to get on board with bunting's outlook on life and his violent attitude toward the world like you were just basically suggesting it's bizarre because 35 year old lane and 20 year old wagner are in what a lot of people that at that time considered a same-sex relationship uh either that or some sort of queer relationship that you would think a nazi who's very anti-quote gay and pedophile would not be supportive of right so it was a little odd um but for bunting it was excusable because wagner was bunting's close friend and his partner in crime. And he was like, fine, if that's your partner that you choose, I'll allow it for now. So Wagner himself, he's the one who started dating Lane at age 13. So Wagner had a troubling childhood where his

stepfather used to repeatedly beat him. He met Lane, like I said, and they began their relationship when he was only 13 and Lane was 28. Considering Bunting's mission to get rid of pedophiles, this is the other layer of this, is that Lane was a convicted pedophile. I mean, to be fair, he's having a relationship with a 13-year-old. So like, yeah yeah not surprising but so lane was a convicted pedophile so on top of being queer also was literally by law considered a pedophile got it okay and yet bunting was just like that's different you know that's fine. Yeah, that makes a 0% chance or 0% chance.

Yeah, it's all. Listen, I'm telling you, I don't think I ever really understood migraines until I was like, is this what a migraine is? When my whole my skin hurts and I can't open my eyes and oh, my God. So Lane and Wagner, as I kind of suggested shared a home near Bunting's house so they were neighbors and that's how they had met and they were frequent visitors at Bunting's house uh because they were like super into his horrifying outlook on the world and they also often brought along their friend Mark Hayden. So there are these four folks. They became fascinated with bunting sick obsession with cruelty and vengeance.

And they all got on board and were like, you know what? Speaking of cults, they all got on board and were like, you're right. You're changing the world. You're making it a better place by getting rid of, quote, gays and pedophiles. And we're in on it with you. We are jumping aboard. So yikes indeed. And we're in on it with you. We are jumping aboard.

So yikes indeed. If you fast forward now to 1994, it's been two years since Clinton's murder. He was the one who had gotten hit with a shovel for just like coming over once. Right. So on August 16th of 1994, two farmers, unfortunately, well, I guess fortunately in that they found his body. They made a gruesome discovery. They found a shattered human skull and other human remains in a rural township called Lower Light. And it was Clinton's body. But unfortunately, police wouldn't be able to identify him until five years later.

So now we know who it was. But at the time, they had no clue. And so it took five years for that to come out. and so it took five years for that to come out um so at the time of the body being discovered bunting according to the criminal code.com spent the greater part of 1994 investing in his new hobby uh this is not good oh his hobby was killing and skinning cats and dogs good night moving on that's a day i want to warn people that's that's the end of that okay sometimes people write like oh i like i can tell by how quickly christine says something about cats and dogs like that it'll be over soon so yeah it's over we're moving on we've ripped the band-aid we ripped the band-aid ripped off

the band-aid uh that's the end of animal cruelty so he also continued to build up his group of social outcasts so remember he's like kind of-like gathering these people who look up to him as their leader. Yes. So we've got Lane. We've got Wagner, who's Lane's partner. We have Hayden, their friend. And the last recruit or the latest recruit is a recent divorcee named Elizabeth Harvey. So she joins the group and Elizabeth and Bunting begin a sexual affair.

But remember, he's already married to his wife, Veronica. Right. So again, this just gets really convoluted. But basically, he starts having an affair with this new divorced woman who joins their group. So Elizabeth. This results in Elizabeth moving into Bunting's home in 1995. Presumably, Veronica's still there.

So who knows? Just a fun, fun gang of folks super duper okay just like a okay anyway moving on so she brings with her her two sons from previous marriages and their names are troy yudi yudi uh who's 18 and james or jamie lasakis is 14. And now that name might sound familiar because Jamie Vlasakis is the one who way up at the top of the notes was with his friend David Johnson to pick up a computer when David became a victim. The last victim of the Snowtown murder. I see. I see where we're heading. Okay.

Yeah, it's not good. It's nowhere great. So sorry about that so in what seems to be uh an unfortunate thread in the story troy and jamie also had difficult traumatic upbringings jamie's birth father had sexually abused troy growing up which is thought to be part of the reason troy in turn then sexually abused his younger brother jamie elizabeth wasn't necessarily bringing her sons into a healthy environment here either because as david johnson's um so that was the first victim

up top who was getting a computer at one uh his stepfather later described bunting as not interested in sport he had no hobbies it just seemed that the sun rose and the sun set on pedophilia and that would be virtually all he'd discuss. So now this woman's having a relationship with him. She brings her two sons, who've had a troubled background and are still really young, into this house. And this is now the environment they're exposed to. Just like perfect storm mess. So Bunting, unfortunately, was able to get jamie under his wing like he took him under his

wing pretty quickly so he became kind of his like i don't know mentor okay do you know what i mean yeah yeah so while elizabeth and her sons are moving in uh not far from bunting's house a 26 year old ray davies who lives in a rented caravan parked behind the house of 47 year old suzanne allen his landlady so one day in 1995 ray davies who was actually also a former lover of suzanne's uh his i'm telling you and i'm sorry i'm so headache inducing i i you really you weren't kidding because i you were like oh there's so many names and i was like okay i got it i'm on it and then i'm just like every time i've have barely filed one away i'm opening up a new filing cabinet in my head yeah i'm so sorry it's

like files within files within files that are then attached to other files that are then linked back to another file it's so messy um it's it's it's uh usually i love a good set of drama like it is a lot of drama you're right walking into a lot like a family drama is usually very fun for me this because of its dark tendencies no and also i cannot keep up with everyone it's like the dugger is all over again it is it is like i'm asking you to do a lot here um think you see me to think got it no i'm asking myself to do a lot because this is like so wildly okay convoluted so the most recent there's ray and sue and his landlord who he's also hooked up with before yes suzanne exactly so ray and suzanne so Ray hears frantic knocking on his door and it's Suzanne.

And she is furious and she accuses Ray of molesting a child she knows as well as making sexual advances toward her grandsons. Oh. So Ray is like, no, I did not do that and protests his innocence. But she still goes off to tell the police. And guess who she bumps into along the way? But good old Bunting from across the road. Of course course you know how bunting feels about pedophiles i know how he feels about some pedophiles not the ones that are his friends quote unquote right right exactly exactly so what bunting hears from alan from suzanne is basically all the excuse he needs

to justify his urge to kill a new victim aka ray because he's like great well i've been wanting to kill somebody and you're telling me ray is potentially a pedophile i'm on it so my god john captures ray binds and throws him into the trunk of a car john and his peeps drive you know his pal his friends that live with him and hang out with him they drive ray to the bushland which in australia is typically um like a blanket term for natural land that's only lightly settled natural vegetation okay um and there they torture him before taking him back to bunting's house where he's tortured even more and ultimately strangled to death and elizabeth harvey the one who moved in and started an affair with him and

brought her two sons yeah she uh his new girlfriend is present during this murder as well and has been basically fully indoctrinated that like he deserves it because he is a pedophile so during the torture bunting encourages her to get involved so she picks up a ceramic tool and like stabs him in the leg so he's really just like pulling all these people into his like sick fantasy you know know, by basically like, I mean, not to again pull Hewn on it, but it's basically saying like, look, you're saving the world in this twisted way. Like you're ridding the world of pedophiles, but it's like, no, like none of this is proven. It's all like alleged, you know, like we're all gathering together for this alleged thing that no one has confirmed but that you'll save the world and it's our responsibility says no one right fully exactly

and like bunting says that it's okay and that we're doing the right thing and so that's basically where they were um he must have been one charming mofo because he's just getting people to fall in love with him. He's getting friends to murder people for him. I mean, he must be a charming fella. I don't have friends that nice. I don't have friends who would listen to me that loyally. Oh, hell no. Nope. Me neither.

No offense, Em. But no offense. So Ray's body is dumped and buried in a shallow grave in Bunting's backyard. I guess he couldn't even bother to drive out to the bushland to bury him. And even more tragically, Ray Davies was never reported missing, at least from what I could gather. So nobody even reported him missing. Now, guess who started to get turned on by this whole uh this whole murder situation it was suzanne ray davies landlady lady slash lover who accused him of being a pedophile was like actually i'm like super into

this what in the world i know oh my gosh i know and that's why i was saying like like and then on top of it it was like well now you have to figure out how to reference people who aren't whose identities aren't totally clear but you don't want to be disrespectful and that's right two small parts of this whole story where everyone's name is so confusing already anyway wow so basically what what a what a topic to say aha this is the one this is the one we gotta do why why so so okay so just to just so i have full clarity everyone needs this yes please well i the the thing i'm gonna ask about is so was suzanne into the fact that people were pedophiles or that they were dying but they're being killed she was really turned on by the murder of ray okay that's what i okay yeah as well as were the other people in the group. I wouldn't necessarily say turned on, but they were all like on board with it.

They were all mentally overstimulated by it. They were fully. A little aroused in some way. In some way, whether that was intellectually, spiritually, sexually, who knows? Emotionally? Who's to say? Maybe just emotionally. But yeah suzanne was not even a part of this group right but then she finds out about this and is like okay i'm like super into that i'm just like i've been i've been looking for a social circle i'm yes you know my mahjong

group just isn't cutting it anymore so i'm so glad i found you folks. Oh my gosh. So yeah, now they have another member of their group. So this is where things... So let's just keep going. So Suzanne then begins a sexual relationship with Bunting as well. So she's clearly turned on by the murder and by him. So she... Now Bunting is sleeping with Suzanne and Elizabeth. And now he...

And he still has his wife veronica wow so veronica let's veronica girl get it together somewhere in the mix i don't know where she seems to drop off eventually so maybe she makes it out of there but hopefully he now has this new lover and it's suzanne from across the road and at this point like i said bunting's married to veronica in a relationship with el with Elizabeth and now in a relationship with Suzanne. However, Suzanne becomes obsessed with him to the point where her sexual advances start to annoy him. Oh. So guess what happens?

Does he fucking kill her? She just, like, disappears. So. Oh. That's spooky. Okay. What a weird coincidence yeah so suzanne is the one who accused ray of being a pedophile then got really turned on when he was murdered then got obsessed with the guy who murdered him then was disappeared uh when she became a little too clingy yikes

so after her family reported her missing the police went to her home and her her place which was normally pretty neat and tidy had been fully trashed and the two people who knew where she was were john bunting of course and robert wagner his his partner in crime it was later discovered that her body had been dismembered wrapped in 11 garbage bags and buried in bunting's backyard oh my god yeah yeah oh no it's like so extra and horrific um so initially the police didn't even think this had anything to do with foul play because all they saw was the messy apartment uh so suzanne was just reported missing um and bunting would later claim this was his later attempt at sounding innocent. He later claimed he had found Suzanne dead in her bed after she suffered from a heart attack.

And it was only then that they decided to dismember her and put her in 11 trash bags. I was going to say, I was going to say like, oh, you found her dead and you went, aha, I know what's next. I know what to do. I got this. Don't worry. It is like I've seen this nowhere before. I know exactly what to do. I got this. Don't worry. It's like, I've seen this nowhere before. I know exactly what to do next. That's terrible.

On my own YouTube channel that I invented because nobody else on the planet has ever had this thought before. Yeah. Like so sick and twisted. So his excuse was like, no, no, she was already dead. That's why I dismembered her and put her in 11 trash bags. Don't you see? Can't you see?

Now, oh, I see what you, i see where the miscommunication happens it's like that doesn't really excuse you well in my opinion from anything but who am i to say so they dismembered her either way and began collecting her social security payments so not great uh and in 1996 bunting elizabeth harvey one of his lovers and her two sons troy and james moved to live in a town called murray bridge around 100 kilometers away and there's no mention of veronica so we're assuming she just kind of didn't show up i didn't i was like let's pray that she actually left and isn't also somewhere in 11 trash bags yeah oh yeah let's let's hope she like stayed but not in a dead way in like a i'm gonna start a new happy life way like she's she stayed in like i'm gonna grab my keys and just casually go to the gas station and then never come back yeah and get a new job and a

new life and i hope i knew i knew identity yeah new identity so hopefully that's what happened because ron could just kind of like poof out of the picture, which we can only hope for the best. But so his other two are gone now. So Veronica is gone and Suzanne is in some trash bags. So he and Elizabeth and her two sons move to a different town. And unfortunately, this is not the end. I know it sounds like, oh, happily ever after. Nope. This is just, he's just getting started with his whole, his whole mission, quote unquote. So he still keeps in close contact with his BFF, Robert Wagner. And in this new house, I guess maybe this is, he got it on Wayfair. I don't know.

He has this like crime wall where it's like basically the cliche, like string, red string. Oh my God. Like a, like a the cliche like string red string oh my god like a like a sunny like always like it's always sunny red string crime wall um and he calls it he calls it the rock spider wall now i will explain that okay please do because because i didn't get you had me at red string wall that's all. Yeah. So basically it was a bunch of pictures connected by red string. And a rock spider is actually a term for a prisoner sent to jail for pedophilia. So he created this like pedophile mind map thing. And this is how he decided he was going to track all these people that he was, quote, you know, after for their, quote unquote, sins that he's making up. Gotcha.

So all the names on the wall were people that Bunting has deemed child molesters, even if there was not any actual evidence. Oh, fun. So it's just it's a wall of pictures of people. The end. It's a wall of pictures of random people that he's decided deserve torture torture and murder yeah for no reason it's pretty wild so oh my goodness yeah it's like a bad episode of criminal minds where there's like you're like this doesn't have much sense to it but like this is actually what happened so it's like just fucking bananas it's bananas wow okay so he now has this fun wall um apparently sometimes he would even

this is not a joke find a name at random in the phone book and call them and just start accusing them and abusing them over the phone um oh so this person is actually not mentally well i think he's like thoroughly unhinged at this point because he's literally randomly deciding that people that he's never met are i was gonna say it's like it's one thing if like you are completely wrong but you had some sort of like reason to think it versus like oh i'm just gonna call you because i don't like how your fucking name sounds you must be a pedophile like you spell ashley weird so i'm gonna give you a call and i've decided that you're pedophile exactly exactly it's like so nonsensical like there's no connection at all and so even the people where in the beginning it was like oh suzanne accused him of being a pedophile it's

like okay he took it too far in his thinking obviously like he he wanted a reason and someone gave it to him but this time no one's actually no one's given him he's creating reasons yeah exactly like nobody's even giving him a breadcrumb to follow he's just inventing it and well we'll get to it but i was like and meanwhile lane is like literally a convicted pedophile and has been left alone this whole time but whatever we'll get to it so uh yeah so he called people up occasionally just to be like hey you're a pedophile and they were like this is macy's can i help you okay sir this is a wendy's sir this is a wendy's please we don't serve whatever you're asking for oh my gosh at the

i don't know why that was the first fucking business i could think of i don't know i don't know i don't know why that was so funny but it really just is the exact opposite of like pedophilia which by the way they should use as a slogan macy's the exact opposite i've heard they're having some financial trouble in the 21st century maybe they should hire me as their marketing consultant like kohl's it's like we got k cash. Macy's, we don't have pedophiles. So, like, we're equally great, if not better. We were not on the rock spider wall. And I think that's saying something.

Okay. Why is it called the rock spider wall? I told you, because rock spider is a term for a prisoner sent right right right right right right okay it's a pedophile mind map m come on get with the program it's a mind map you can only get it at macy's labor day sale yeah it's all very now i'm just shouting out things about the first source i'm just thinking of like uh like all those commercials where it just says bogo oh no okay we're sorry macy's don't sue us please macy's we know that you only have the best intentions in mind so who basically he had this rock spider wall and at the center of the rock spider wall was one person. Do you have a guess as to which of the above?

The CEO of Macy's? Who? Do you have a guess as to who in the above may be his new target? No, because I lost total... I lost all reasoning. Is it Wagner or Lane? um it's lane yeah the part the

ex-partner of wagner so vanessa lane who initially went by barry so it's you know said both ways again i don't want to intentionally dead name anyone but vanessa lane wagner's now ex-partner who had been fundamental in that first murder of Clinton. Right. Now, I guess now that they're broken up, Wagner and Lane, now they're the center of the rock spider wall because they're not off limits anymore. I'm not really sure. But now suddenly Lane is target number one. And by spring of 1997, Bunting decides it's time to kill again now we're not at

lane yet so lane is like the the epitome of this whole plot but his next victim is actually 19 year old michael gardner was the name that is mostly used however there are a lot of debates on this because they also went by mich Gardner. Got it. And another person. And we have no idea how they actually identified. No. There's no way of knowing if there's a dead name or they're both valid names. Exactly.

Because oftentimes it was written that they were an outwardly gay man who was very open about it, but also went by michelle but also it's just a lot of conflicting info out there okay um so i'm just gonna go again with the website trans lives matter who use they them pronouns for michelle sure so i'm just gonna use that to to be as careful as possible um so it seems that michelle was their preferred name so i'm gonna also go with that okay so michelle was close with their landlady nicole zarita so they rented out one of the rooms in nicole's place and the two of them had a great relationship um they'd even like paint each other's fingernails and dress up together just like very close it's all these land ladies are like befriending their tenants it's a little strange they're having really intimate relationships really intimate you're right whether it's sexual or like slumber

party yeah wow it's like i don't do that with the only thing i do with my landlord is make allison scream at her about our fucking roaches and roommates or uh i don't even have like slumber parties with my own friends anymore i'm like how do you find time to have a slumber party with your landlady? But okay. I guess if you live in the same building, it's easier. So let's see. So like I said, Michelle was friends with the landlady, Nicole. They had a great relationship.

And now this is a sentence that I italicized because I was like, I need to say this clearly because it's really kind of confusing so okay nicole is the landlady nicole's cousin vicky lives nearby and is having an affair with robert wagner who is this is like lane's ex-partner this is like my hometown in terms of like drama and everyone knowing each other and it being weirdly incestuous oh god okay so the so the landlord the one who's having the weird sleepover with yeah their cousin is now dating wagner after they broke up with lane yeah so wagner had broken up with lane right exactly and wagner's now dating this woman named

vicky who's cousins with nicole the landlady who has a tenant named michelle gardner i do 90 get what you're saying okay it's like i 80 get what i'm saying so i'm glad you understand okay well a plus i guess is what i'm getting then if i'm smarter than you on finally on something not finally i think we've all seen this uh from day one but i think my my high interest in drama and like listening to other people's stories and when i say drama i mean drama i am not affiliated with but like my high interest that's the best kind of drama yeah my my favorite thing to do is like people watch but only dramatic people and like yeah so I have been practicing for a long time to be able to keep primed for this setup this web I'm loving I'm loving I'm loving the uh the debate or not the debate the uh

uh the interaction amongst everyone so oh I mean, maybe I should create my own rock spider wall and just put everybody's face. I'm not going to sit here and pretend like that wouldn't be wildly helpful. I think it would be extremely helpful, but unfortunately, I'm not going to do it. My bad. I do not have the time for that. If you have the time to

print out all those photos, you can send them to me and we'll figure it out. We'll do a family tree on Ancestry or something and branch everyone off. Yeah. So basically what I'm trying to say is essentially that Michelle got roped into this whole crowd inadvertently by accident because they were living in Nicole's building. And Nicole's cousin was dating Robert Wagner. I got it. So basically, they hear, it was inevitable that Bunting would hear about Michelle,

who lived in this building and not surprisingly did not approve of their lifestyle. Right. Quote, unquote, I want to say lifestyle as they had put it. So it was just inevitable for them to cross paths because so-and-so was dating so-and-so's cousin and, you know, whole deal. inevitable for them to cross paths because so-and-so was dating so-and-so's cousin and you know whole deal so one day an incident involving one of uh vicky's children pushed vicky who's who's dating wagner pushed vicky and wagner into a rage they'd apparently come home to see michelle chasing mills excited kid around the room which was all fun and games however vicky and robert got angered when michelle playfully caught the kid and accidentally put

their hand over the kid's mouth while trying to grab him and wagner and mills decided this was sinister and that michelle was a pedophile also yeah i okay was wondering about that saw that coming it was bound to happen yep um so when nicole went on a trip soon after this event obviously wagner has told Bunting all about this because they're BFFs and partners in crime and like literal partners in crime so Bunting and Wagner decide to make their move when Nicole the landlord is out of town because now it means Michelle is at home alone got it so Michelle this is horrible is abducted and taken to the shed behind Bunting's house where they are tortured and strangled to death their body was dismembered limbs thrown into an acid-filled barrel oh my god they just

casually had lying around the shed um you know how you do of course of course so uh bunting and wagner then broke into nicole's house and searched for michelle's wallet to access their bank details but they couldn't find it anywhere because of course they want the money immediately because they were taking like social security payments from the other people they've killed so they're like well let's get let's get their wallet oh my gosh they took all of michelle's belongings and some of uh some of nicole's to make it look like uh michelle had ransacked the place and left and fled. So they wanted Nicole to come home from her trip and walk in and go like, oh, shit, Michelle took all my stuff and ran, which is pretty much what happened. So Nicole got home, was totally shaken, but was like,

OK, I guess I guess they left with with my stuff. However, Nicole eventually finds Michelle's wallet under the bed and Nicole's like that's odd because if Michelle was leaving why would they leave without their wallet right strange so in passing conversation oh Nicole tells Wagner hey it's really weird you know how like Michelle had left left me behind well they also left their wallet isn't that odd and remember wagner was like part of the team trying to find this wallet so they're like ding ding ding it exists so after hearing this and wanting to access michelle's money bunting gets his crew to start calling nicole up in an attempt to convince her that they are friends of michelle's and michelle wants their wallet back oh god so god okay so she refuses saying like fine if michelle wants their wallet they can come and get it exactly

especially because she's also thinking michelle took all my shit and left like no way like they can come bring my stuff back and get their wallet and we'll trade. Yeah, exactly. Got it. Okay. I'm liking that person so far. Like makes sense. Yeah. They're like, why on earth would I come meet you for this wallet? If they ransacked my home and like pieced out, like they can get their wallet. So obviously they're frustrated because they're like, well, shit, we need to find a way to get this wallet.

We obviously Michelle's gone, so we can't use them to get it. There's even a part. What? Nothing. I think I figured out There's even a part. Nothing. I think I figured out what's going to happen. Oh, do tell because I'm already like starting to remember. Are they going to dress up as them and sneak in? Oh, okay.

I don't know if this was like a little rascals, like a bunch of people. Trench coat situation. No. Unfortunately, no fun visuals like that. no uh unfortunately no fun visuals like that but so nicole started getting more and more calls claiming the urgency of getting the swallow back along with a bizarre call from someone claiming to be michelle which she's like that's i know that's not michelle right like leave me alone at that point i would just not trust any single michelle related phone call i'd be like okay something is going on and that's pretty much what happens. Because eventually, Wagner somehow convinces her

to just hand it over. Because at this point, I'd be like, okay, there's something going on here. Like, I don't want this wallet anymore. Right? No, like, why would you want to be involved? Yeah, like, fine, take it, take the wallet, which is pretty much what happened. So they get hold of this wallet. Okay, all's happy. So while all this is happening, Vanessa Lane, John's big target, primo target on the Rock Spider wall, gets a new boyfriend, Thomas Trevelyan. Now, Thomas is a teenager. Again, yikes.

A teenager with a developmental disability. Apparently only wore army clothes, used to go outside and like scare the neighbors with screaming and antics i don't know a lot of interesting stuff about this thomas but basically thomas and lane start dancing dancing oh my god dating okay i was like they just got nothing they're feeling it's like is this town footloose i'm confused it's a really really sinister version of footloose if so it is yeah i'm sorry my brain synapses are not firing your brain was like please god give give us like a positive light here and they just started dancing just yeah like it was high school musical they broke out in song and everything

went back to normal they thought the only way to cure this was through dance and dance they did maybe it was because nothing gets cured so maybe that was the clue all along but unfortunately nobody tries it instead they start dating and this target around lane is getting larger and larger for Bunting. He's becoming more and more obsessed with killing Lane, even more so than usual, because now Bunting has heard that Lane has been talking to people about Bunting's activities. So now he's getting word that Lane's gossiping about Bunting's interests, aka murdering people yes so bunting has now built this entire narrative that every pedophile is somehow linked to lane and that he needs to stop lane because that will kind of stop the swell of pedophilia that he's allegedly linked to it's really what a theory bananas what yeah that's just like that that's a thread that

just came out of nowhere like it well i guess in his in his own wild mind yeah i mean this guy's calling up yeah on the phone book and just deciding they're pedophiles but it's almost like there's like like a network of pedophiles and they all come back to lane yeah that's what he's basically told himself okay i mean to be fair lane's the only person so far that's actually a convicted pedophile so in that way there is some sense amongst the characters in this story that makes it makes the most sense dependent on this one person got it yeah and sense is a very relative term yeah obviously in this scenario but that's it's at least like okay this guy actually was technically

a convicted pedophile so this is the only person that like you're not just like looking through a phone book and guessing completely making it up yeah yeah or with like no evidence exactly so basically bunting is deciding like i need to stop lane that's what's gonna be the next best thing for this world so in 1997 bunting and his crew including lane's boyfriend thomas trevillian the teen or teenager that i mentioned burst in on lane subdued and tortured them and this time to get rid of a potential trace bunting forces lane to make a call to their mother prior to the murder in order to explain their sudden disappearance so if this is yeah really horrifying in the call lane told their mother they were moving to queensland and wanted nothing to do with her oh my god isn't that like

just so fucked up oh my god that's awful yes it's awful so they tortured lane they're not gonna like this by crushing their toes with pliers fuck you fuck you fuck the end the end absolutely not christine schieffer absolutely not oh no i'm nervous laughing that's not funny that's it's not it's certainly not with with just just the toes or toes and fingers well since you're asking uh toes and nails so i don't know i know you asked i'm sorry take my breath away oh my god that is i mean no matter what they were going to do it was going to be terrible but that personally is horrific yes agreed it's it's that's why em and i don't often like to bring torture into the scenario because it really really really really is rough uh obviously that's the fucking understatement of the century but it's

that is beyond that's so like talking about that terrible thing yeah yeah so tortured them before strangling them to death then they wrapped their body up in carpet left uh lane in the house for a few days and then took them to bunting's shed where they were dismembered and put into an acid-filled barrel so now this mo is becoming clearer and you're seeing why it's called the bodies and barrels murders yes yes so 10 days after lane's murder one of their friends reported the missing however because of the fake call to lane's mother police believe lane had just moved to queensland and they're like well there's not much we can do it's an adult who you know what sorry i did not mean to totally interrupt you no no go ahead you know what's specifically awful about this story compared

to the others which they're all terrible but lane was involved in these previously so yeah they knew what was coming like they knew what was going to happen in some way yeah like they were part of earlier murders and tortures which is just like well the other victims too i imagine were like maybe there's a chance i'm going to get out of here but lane was probably like oh true lane was like no one's ever gotten out because I was part of it. Yeah. Good point. Good point. So because of that phone call to Lane's mom, police were like, well, there's not much we can do, which I actually do kind of understand because Lane's an adult and left a message with their mom or at least called their mom and said like, oh, I'm moving. Yeah. So like it's hard, you know, even if it's suspicious,

I feel like that's probably a hard thing to investigate. So Thomas Trevelyan, the teen, has now moved in with Robert Wagner and Wagner's girlfriend, Vicky. So he soon confides in one of his cousins that because he was involved in Lane's murder, he's now concerned for his own safety. Just like you were saying being like well lane was also part of the gang now now i'm part of the gang uh-oh am i in trouble no one's safe no one's safe and honestly it's really kind of tragic because it's almost like he wrote his own destiny because it was when bunting heard that trevillian was like talking to people about how worried he was that they were

like great well now we got to get rid of him because he's talking shit and he's telling people what we did and uh he became suspicious that trevillian was confiding in people which was exactly what he was doing and so bunting and wagner were like okay well got to get rid of this guy too and that's so wild i mean it's like it's just another part of the like i don't even know the thought process i'm gonna say in quotes that bunting had of that like some people who were like actually convicted of things like this they're gonna help you hurt other people you're claiming have done these things but then those people are safe until all of a sudden they realize for you that they could also be responsible for the claims like it's like you were gonna let the actual not that you should be hurting anybody but you were gonna let those

people off until they reminded you hey by the way you're being a hypocrite you know yeah yeah or like hey with that logic i should be in danger and they're like you know what you're right you should be in danger like it's like you're writing your own. I mean, it's so fucked up. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, this is the guy who like one of his lovers got too clingy and he killed her. So right. It's not even no rhyme or reason anyway.

Right. Like there's no rhyme or reason anyway. But yeah, this is like extra rough. So let's see. They decide that Trevelyan needs to go. So they took advantage of his troubled background and his disability and they staged a suicide. The police found or somebody found him hanging in a tree in the Adelaide Hills in November of 97. And it would take years before the police figured out it was anything other than a suicide because all signs pointed to him having you know mental instability he had a diagnosed disability uh it just added up

for them and it wasn't for years that they realized this was linked to these other deaths so by early 1998 a now 17 year old jamie that's one of the kids of Elizabeth that she brought along. The one with the computer thing in the beginning of the story. Yes, yes, yes, precisely. So Jamie is still living in John Bunting's house with his mother. And unfortunately, Jamie has since become addicted to heroin. And he decides it's a good idea to invite his friend Gavin to move in. Why is anyone moving into this house?

But OK. So Bunting excuses Jamie's heroin use. invite his friend gavin to move in like why is anyone moving into this house but okay so bunting excuses jamie's heroin use however he despises gavin porter for being a quote junkie so when gavin again like you're just like it's very selective yeah it's very selective because you're just ignoring other people with the exact same issue you don't like other people exactly which is exactly what points to almost this doesn't have anything to do with actual right gelantism or logic it's just like i don't like this guy yeah he deserves it yeah that's exactly it it just it's the only logic yeah yeah so he despises gavin for being a quote junkie um and what it took for him to freak out was that he accidentally pricked himself on a

needle that gavin had left around the house so he flew into a rage decided that gavin was his next victim and one day when jamie was away bunting finds gavin asleep in the back of a car not sure how that happened but at this point nothing surprises me and wagner so bunting's brought wagner along again and the two of them pounce they beat torture and murder gavin his body's dismembered and put into another barrel full of acid in the garage where's all this acid coming from do we ever figure that out i want to know we don't even know what kind of acid it is yeah what are you doing are you like are you doing these next two barrels of acid on purpose or are you doing these things and then you're like oh look another barrel

of acid like oh look where did that come from and i it makes me wonder too because then i'm like is your mo intentional or is it coincidental that like you just happen to always be near be near acid you know it's got to be yeah it's very like acme anvil and yeah like a cartoon it's like well that's a weird coincidence that what are all these cliff what are all these pianos doing in the sky exactly exactly what are these barrels of acid coming from instacart i don't know where you can get one but i've never been able to find one on my own so now they have another body in the barrels in the garage in the acid so when jamie returns being like hey where's my friend gavin bunting takes him to the shed to show him what has happened and there on the floor lie the limbs of his murdered friend gavin oh the limbs are still there don't worry uh then the shock continues when bunting lifts one of the barrel lids revealing the

remains of lane and michelle gardner as well so they're like oh you think that's horrifying well look at what else we did so jamie hurls everywhere as you should you should as you should it's the only logical like a to b thing that's happened so far in this whole story so yeah it took this long and now i'm like catching up i'm like aha yeah that checks out body parts puke makes sense so he hurls everywhere uh but he's so scared that he agrees basically by force to become bunting's wingman because bunting's like well here's it's basically a threat like this will happen to you this happened to your friend and to people you've known since you were a child and guess what it? It can happen to you too. So basically, by August 1998, Bunting has decided that Jamie should get his first taste of murder.

And he's like, hmm, who would be a perfect victim for this? How about his half-brother Troy, who had sexually abused him when they were younger? Because Troy is a pedophile to him and gay, right? Yes. Well, at least a pedophile to him and gay right yes well at least a pedophile or at least he thinks it's an easy way to tell to convince jamie like hey this guy hurt you right in childhood you should kill him and that's at least an easy way for him to get into this whole game it's like someone without the ability to have rational thinking at this point trying to be rational like totally yeah totally like this makes

sense yeah i guess um so that's what they do and yeah i guess that's true too like there's that element of pedophilia in it i mean they were both children but there's that element of like child molestation and again like this was a bigger story as far as like they were troy was molested by his father and so it's like a big right horrifying circle but so they arrange a trip where bunting jamie wagner and hayden yeah we haven't heard about mark hayden in a while i was like where's this guy been he did he run off with veronica i know he maybe he's with veronica so they all go to visit troy the brother of jamie in the night they enter his bedroom forcefully drag him to the bathroom torture him tape record his voice uh a recording which would later be

known as voices of the dead which is like a creepy thing to name it before murdering him and even when his half-brother is lying dead bunting orders jamie to kick the body which he does he then helps him carry troy to the car where he's transported back to bunting orders jamie to kick the body which he does he then helps him carry troy to the car where he's transported back to bunting's house thrown in a barrel full of acid you know the drill i get it at this point i'm starting to finally understand all this stuff yeah it's starting to right itself so jamie gets access to his brother's social security benefits uses it to get more drugs they're now eight people dead just in case you need a tally. And all police have are a number of missing persons reports and social security fraud. So

they're like not being able to connect all of these together. So Bunting's gang seems to be unstoppable. I'm sure in their own eyes, that's what they were. And they've fully lost any compass of morality, if there ever was one, any compass of like rationale or even their own twisted sense of morals like they are all over the place i mean they killed elizabeth harvey's son remember troy was also the son of elizabeth who's like his lover and lives with him or at this point his girlfriend i guess his partner and lives with him um so they just like killed her kid even though it was for a quote reason like it's still just all over the place so bunting's latest issue is that mark hayden's wife is now annoying him oh okay what an issue to have am i

right yeah uh he decides she has to go as well but not before he targets her 18 year old nephew fred listen what the fuck did fred do i'm telling you so fred had actually helped out in calling nicole to claim michelle's wallet so fred had actually been involved and had been part of the scheme to get michelle's wallet had helped out with the crime and on and on the right the quote right side side yeah had tried to help uh get the wallet back was like fully on their side but he was just an easy target oh my god at this point they don't need any other reason then i want to kill someone and he's there it's just i mean truly it's just like because is just because yeah because i want to kill someone so with jamie stillis's accomplice on september 17th 1998 bunting tortures fred brooks

uh lit cigarettes are placed in his nose yeah a cigarette lighter is used to burn a smiley face into his forehead and this is the worst part a sparkler is inserted into his penis okay next so anyway lit lit sparklers yeah like fireside like a crackly one eek i can't i mean i don't have that part i don't have those parts but yikes i can only imagine i i i don't know what to do that's me neither really really really fucking it's just like next level like how do you even come up with this shit you know that poor i mean poor all of them but like the fact that like that is that like i've never even had that thought like i can't wrap my head into something that dark and twisted. But then to know that not only would it be a random thought, but someone else had that thought act on it. And that was someone's last memory.

Jesus fucking Christ. One way to put it. Bummer central. Fuck! Yeah. So tortured him clearly pretty thoroughly and then they took his body to his uncle mark's house uh mark hayden where the other barrels had since been taken for storage and he joins the lovely collection that bunting is building of uh barrels acid filled barrels with bodies in them how many barrels are there

per how many bodies are there per barrel at this point do we know that's a great question because like i've only heard i think of like three or four barrels but there's like now like almost 10 people so some of them were buried in shallow graves this was before the barrels came into the picture okay the first person to be put in the barrel was michelle okay i believe and then it was lane and then it was gavin got it not that it fucking matters no but you're right i mean it's it's like trying to get a grasp on this whole their mo um so they take uh brooks benefits and start taking his social security benefits uh just a few weeks later in october bunting and jamie are in their car when they spot a man named gary o'dwyer crossing the road they notice he has a limp and it turns out that gary was a victim of a car accident

either way bunting decides that gary might be a recipient of a disability pension and he was right jesus so wanting that disability pension bunting rouses a scheme to get him and the gang invited to gary's house they set this up and when they're invited over for drinks bunting gives the signal which is just standing up and at that point wagner grabs odwyer from gary odwyer from behind and starts to choke him they beat him up torture him get his financial details and record his voice for posterity's sake all before strangling him to death and then dismembering him and storing him in another barrel fuck i mean so at at this point we can just call this guy a serial killer, right? Or a serial group. Oh, holy, fully, thoroughly a serial killer. Yes.

In my mind, I don't know why, because this is not what I, I don't think this is how serial killers are defined. It's the lack of rhyme or reason that makes me want to recategorize them. I was trying to follow it for a while of like, oh, they're a group of people who, you know, make wild claims. They're not even making claims anymore. They're just like, this is, I just want to kill you. They just know they're getting away with it. Yeah. Okay.

I don't know where I was really going with my point, but got it. I'm officially in serial killer zone. Oh, yeah. I mean, we're at like, I think this is the ninth. Yeah, that does it i think we've i think we've reached a threshold that the fbi gives yeah isn't the the threshold like once you've hit five or something so it's three so it's very it varies but it's typically three um but not at the same time because that would you know just be a mass murder yeah or that would eliminate like a family annihilator or something like that but it's three i believe separate instances uh shoot hold on it

doesn't i shouldn't have put you on the spot like that no no it's a good question um i always thought it was once you hit five individual murders that made you a serial killer so there's definitely like back and forth about what the actual number is but typically it's three so let's see a serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more people usually in service of abnormal psychological gratification with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them interesting that's weird that makes it feel like if you did it three times in two weeks it doesn't technically apply because it was less yeah i think it's like tip i think

that's like the typical because if you were like oh i'm gonna kill all my friends or not all my friends i don't know why i said it like that but like if i were gonna kill my i yeah i don't know i think it it depends i think it isn't like strictly it's more like if it were it's a guideline maybe sure i don't know this is not totally pertinent to the story i should i'm sorry i'm sorry no no it is i mean they're clearly serial killers but yeah um essentially they they should be separate events and three or more people is typically the definition. Fun fact, everyone. Fun fact.

So let's see. Where are we? His body is dismembered. This is Gary, who had the disability pension. So after the deaths of Fred, the nephew, and Gary, the random guy on the street, Bunting now decides it's time for elizabeth harvey to die so this is the woman he was sleeping with oh wait no sorry i miswrote that i thought i had miswritten that not elizabeth harvey sorry elizabeth um hayden mark's wife that was annoying him there's two elizabeth i'm sorry i got them mixed up with the H last name. Elizabeth Harvey is his GF.

Right. Is Bunting's GF. And Elizabeth Hayden is his pal Mark's wife, who's annoying, I guess. Who already just killed his nephew. And now it's like. And just killed his nephew. Right. Exactly.

Yeah. Okay. So they decide. I'm sorry. That was my bad. I read it wrong. No, you're good. But it's time for Elizabeth Hayden to die.

Interestingly, she would be his only cis female victim. Fun fact. Fun fact. On November 20th, 1998, while Mark, her husband, was away, she was attacked and murdered by Bunting. And although Mark was away, he later assisted in covering up his wife's murder. So when he got home, he helped them cover it up. Yikes. Which just shows you how deep in they were.

Right. Into Bunting's, like, fucked up headspace. helped them cover it up which just shows you how deep in they were right into bunting's like fucked up headspace so she was reported missing by her brother the following day at 3 p.m because he was like i didn't believe mark's explanations for why she had disappeared and upon receiving the brother's missing persons report police find it suspicious that elizabeth's own husband had not reported her missing but her brother had right. Right. So they decide to investigate. Because Elizabeth was closely linked to all of her murderers, they all fell under close scrutiny of the police, and the police installed a listening device in Mark Hayden's house,

and that becomes pivotal in the unraveling of the case. So those recordings were later used as court evidence, and during this time, the gang even claimed another victim, David Johnson uh all orchestrated by jamie um this was the computer this is full circle of jamie orchestrated the next murder uh which was convincing his friend that they were going to pick up a computer at a building and then david thinks that's exactly what they're doing right walk into the building and david becomes but like i said earlier the last victim of the snowtown murder so right this is our final victim david johnson and this was at the hand of jamie who kind of walked him right into this situation and it would be later revealed that with the final murder bunting and wagner

they thought like let's level up and cook and eat some of this guy. Oh, so we are really escalating ourselves. Why not? Okay. So cannibalism is taking into effect. Yeah. Suddenly that's thrown right into the mix is some cannibalism. So they cooked and eat it. No clue what they thought.

But it's soon discovered by police that John Bunting is renting out an abandoned bank building in Snowtown and they're like that's interesting maybe we should check what's there he had rented it as somewhere to move the bodies once he suspected the police might be on to him so they tracked down the bank building arrived at the site and are immediately repelled by a horrible horrible stench in one of the rooms they find a couple barrels can you imagine being the one who has to open those uh yeah i'm i'm i'm living it in my mind right now and i just can't even imagine i shiver oh my god so they open the barrels and ta-da uh they find body parts of what would turn out to be eight people wow it is for this reason the case is sometimes known like i said as the bodies and barrels murders and fun fact in a documentary

by crime investigation australia an investigator says this is actually kind of fascinating it is also possible that the barrels filled with acid by the killers was used to try and destroy evidence but the killers were too stupid to realize they were actually preserving the bodies the bodies sort of looked mummified the wrong acid was used the bodies were put into hydrochloric acid which doesn't dissolve human tissue should they have been put into sulfuric acid they would have been dissolved i see bozos think they're getting rid of evidence and instead they're preserving it you know that's it's good to know good to know now it's good to know if in trivia i'm asked about acid and and getting rid of body evidence now i know and i always actually because i've never killed anyone i had no idea that they're you that different acids did different things i know it's

so stupid but i've just never thought about it yeah you're right i mean it does make some sense in that like you can like pickle things versus like which preserves them versus like so true i just i've never spent enough time thinking about it and i just assumed like oh you put them in like an industrial strength type of acid eventually the body will go away yeah yeah you'd think so um I guess you're probably safer putting him in water and waiting, but I don't know. Well, luckily I'll never know. Luckily, knock on wood, we'll never find out. Yeah. So police arrested and charged Bunting, Wagner, Vlasakis, and Mark Hayden on May 21st, 1999

for the murders. In questioning, James decides to free flow all information in the hopes that, is Jamie in the hopes that his compliance will give him a shorter sentence. So he directs police to the Waterloo Corner Road house, instructs them to look in the garden. And that is where they find the corpses of Ray Davies and Suzanne Allen, two of the early murders, murder victims. The trial of Bunting and Wagner lasted almost 12 months, which is the longest in the history of South Australia. And during the trial, Justin Brian Ross Martin determined Bunting to be the ringleader, which at least that was correct, and sentenced him to 11 consecutive terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Wagner was sentenced to 10 consecutive terms under the same conditions. And at his sentencing, he stated,

Pedophiles were doing terrible things to children the authorities didn't do anything about it i decided to take action i took that action thank you oh brava brava brava thank you for him snacks snaps for you wow so in december 2003 bunting wagner and Vlasakis were convicted. And in 2011, there's a pretty famous murder. I'm sorry. Jesus, this is a famous murder. There's a pretty famous movie about the murders called Snowtown, which has won a lot of Australian awards.

It's apparently, I haven't seen it, but it's apparently very dark and heavy. So it's apparently a really well done true crime documentary but it's also like pretty hard to watch so just a fair warning if uh if if you want to check it out um i think i was not in the right i considered it but i was not in the right headspace so i bookmarked it for a future time when maybe i'm better equipped to handle that um but a final note is that some people in snowtown have tried to profit off the story with merchandise which is pretty icky and i don't think a cute look right and um there's basically they sell these like barrels like these like toy barrels with like a foot coming out of it and a

head coming out of it and it says snowtown in like cursive oh no yeah it's not a cute look i'm like super not into it. Oh, no. I mean, I'm also the type who's not into like serial killer merchandise. Right, right. That's not the point to me. I don't think that's, I think that's the opposite of the point. But I'm not into it. I mean, just in terms of like you never know who you're around and they could have been

personally affected by it. And now you're. Completely. Yeah. You're like re-traumatizing people or triggering people. It's just not good in my opinion. But that is the story of the snowtown murders and i again i'm so sorry it was so all over the place it's just like i that's why i was so like frantic about getting everything no you're right because it was like so many names and two different elizabeths and

oh my god you did the best you could with what you got and you did pretty darn good. Well, thank you. I just, I feel like we should name this episode the migraine episode because. It is, it is fully a migraine episode. Between this and QAnon? Like, I mean, good fucking luck. If you were hoping for an easy digestible episode, try next week. Yeah, hopefully we'll both like fucking chill out next week.

We'll see. I mean, I'm like, we started this, this oh god like right after i ate like a late breakfast and now the sun is down and it's like seven o'clock and man oh man do i have what i what i'm now recognizing must be a migraine because i don't know what else it could be very much i'm looking forward to reporting on a much easier simpler one episode is all it takes story next week yeah and and i do recognize the irony in that like we are choosing to do this yeah do it to you but we also want to make sure we also make sure want to make sure that when we're reporting on things you know we're doing it right so yeah yeah yeah we're sorry but also we're sorry if you are joining us in our migraine

uh-huh we're sorry if like here's here's what i'm really sorry about if you're on a road trip with someone who loves listening to and that's why we drink and they're like just one episode and then we can listen to whatever you want and you got stuck here for like three hours and now you're at your destination or like you got there and there's still a half an hour of this left and you're like i gotta fucking listen to that show again when I get in the car. I'm so sorry. Well, we're over four hours, so we should probably say bye. Good riddance to us.

I need some water or like some wine, actually. What's wrong with me? I need a nap is what I need. I need a nap and a big bag of booze. We appreciate you. Thank you to everyone that sat through all of this. And that's it. Goodbye.

Goodbye. That's why we drink. Also, we're sorry. We're sorry.