Decoding the Gurus - Interview with Travis View: QANon & Modern Conspiracies

Episode Date: March 25, 2023

If you have managed to avoid the phenomenon of QAnon up until now, then congratulations! Your life is likely better for not knowing. Sadly many of us have been forced not only to learn about the 'enigmatic'(/idiotic) Q and his merry band of followers but also to witness the consequences of the movement during events like January 6th.Travis View (the pen name of Logan Strain) is part of the motley crew of the hugely popular QAnon Anonymous podcast that attempts to document the phenomenon of QAnon. From undercover investigations to creative writing, the QAnon Anonymous team (including previous guest Annie Kelly) have approached the topic with a creative and anthropological approach.We sit down with Travis and ask him to provide us with the 101 on QAnon before we delve into some of the more arcane topics, including cultish splinter groups, the psychology of QAnon adherents, just how much of a threat he thinks the movement poses, and how does he stay sane while looking at depressing craziness week in and week out.Travis is a wealth of information and a groovy guy to boot. The kind of person you would want to have your back in a Zombie apocalypse. So kick back and enjoy hearing about the crumbling of contemporary society.LinksTravis's Instagram account: Great nature photos!QAnon Anonymous PodcastWisdom Signalling & the Wisdom of Criticism w/ John Veraveke, Chris M, Chris Kavanagh, & Matt Browne

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where a psychologist and an anthropologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about. I'm Professor Matt Brown. With me is Chris Kavanagh, the, let's see, the Watson to my homes as we're figuring out what's going on, what the mystery is with the gurus. Sometimes, as you know, Chris, it's a Moriarty-type figure, devilishly difficult to decode. Other times it's more of Colonel Mustard hit them over the head. Dave Rubin.

Dave Rubin-type person. But we get there in the end either way. How are you doing, mate? I'm all right. I think I am like Watson because wasn't he like a battle-hardened veteran let me grinded the airy fairy at sherlock it is it's crazy theories though it is very strong so that's not the same dynamic but apart from that yeah yeah hobbes was uh he was dissolute yeah he would rant around sleeping he was a cocaine addict as well wasn't he a cocaine addict he had substance issues so you

know maybe it kind of works in various ways who's moriarty eric weinstein yeah he really is He is. He's a nemesis. I said good day, Mr. Holmes. Damn you, Moriarty. Yeah. So, yeah. Well, actually, our last episode, Matt, was the lab leak episode. I don't know if you remember. No, I don't. It's all a blur.

It's what we did. We talked with Christian, Eddie, and Michael. Remember them? Yeah, I do. I do. Got it. we talked with christian oh yeah and michael remember them yeah i do i do and it was it was i would say overall very positively received and got a lot of nice feedback about people you know whatever their various conclusions were people seemed happy to be able to hear from relevant experts and for them to have like long enough time and and address various questions

that they themselves have been wondering about so we did a good thing matt it's not like us but i wonder did you notice the reaction amongst the conspiracy prone lab leakers oh i did i did see that now i'm not going to do as good a job as you but just to prove that i do remember some things i am aware of some things i think it was ridley who must have listened because he seems to think okay all right oh sorry i've already punched you in the balloon before we left off. The reason I say I don't think he listened is because he was citing a tweet of someone else who was summarizing a thing from the conversation. Oh, I see. I see. Okay.

But, you know, I was on the right track. You'd have to agree. You're on the right track because he was highlighting a tweet where the person leapt on a detail that christian kind of offhandedly mentioned about ebola viruses when working and he was talking he was actually talking about people spinning up conspiracies where they were accusing him of being responsible for another lab leak, right? That Ebola was with him. He's a busy guy, this Christian Anderson.

Pretty nefarious, really. Travelling around the world, releasing news. So they took his statement as confirming something of significance about working on Ebola in the lab. And Matt Ridley leapt on that as well to say, oh, you know, maybe I hadn't considered enough the possibility of this being. So I think that should have actually served

as an illustration to people about the level of the difference in approaches, right? So a small segment offhand comment is taken as like a hugely significant revelation a slip of the tongue which gives away the whole game where christian anderson is is planning to like infect everyone with viruses from for what reason who knows he's just a villain out there you know unclear how this leads to grants right like you know i guess yeah there's no actual viruses so he just has to go around creating them all so he's in work that's that's the way it goes so yeah but it's just it was going to happen you know the conspiracy and this is a

perfect illustration that there is a community, a group, a receptive audience that is conspiracy prone. And even from a long technical conversation where you critique issues with various details or the general thrust of the way that they present things no it's latching on to a throwaway comment to invent this kind of nefarious scheme yeah and a different release of null or virus so yeah yeah some kind of purported smoking gun that they're hiding in plain sight no he slipped up matt he slipped up he said it you know just he he got too comfortable and he's give the game away. So, yeah. It's fun discourse. But anyway, best of luck to everyone dealing with that. Yes, it won't be us.

And, you know, in our whinge of the week segment, Matt, you may have forgot that we have that segment. You know, periodically comes, you know, it flutters around. But Lex Friedman just did a podcast with Sam Harris. That would usually have good potential for somebody to be complaining about various things. But I'm not going to give it to that, Matt, because there's a clear winner for me this week. And I think you'll agree when I describe it. a clear winner for me this week and I think you'll agree when I describe it. I presume you like many others noticed Jordan Peterson has been tweeting about things.

Yeah, yeah. Very frequently. Yeah, people are on Twitter will know what we're talking about. People who aren't on Twitter, you don't want to know probably. Oh, no, no, Matt. Do they not? So Jordan Peterson, former star of the Kodi Naguru's, celebrity psychologist to the world and noted person. I think one of his rules for life was like, be precise in your speech or something like that. One of his 12 rules originally. He does go on these tweet storms where he's not entirely precise but even by his standards he achieved

quite an impressive feat when he seemed to be duped by some account which repurposed a scene from uh a particular fetish apparently like a restrained milk come milking there's no way to describe it in a family-friendly way is there um no i'm sorry but that's the image i'll paint the picture is of somebody strapped to a medical table with a kind of a pump of some description attached to a particular appendage while they're restrained on the table in a kind of grim hospital lit setting and and jordan the the tweet was saying something about you know the dystopic future under the ccp and jordan happily retweeted this with some commentary about what a terrible event this was not noticing that it was in fact a scene from a fetish pornography um yeah movie yeah so exactly practicing discernment there and as you know chris we've been writing a little bit about jordan peterson in a little article that

we are working on because he is in many ways the grandpapa of gurus and it actually inspired me to go back and scroll all the way back and look at some of his earliest content like some of the very first videos that he released on youtube and they seem to be filmed like at his university i think that there are university students in the auditorium and a much younger and spryer looking Jordan Peterson is talking there. And because I was just interested in to what degree he was different. And, you know, I was definitely struck by the fact that he's just objectively a good lecturer in terms of his style and delivery.

It's quite enviable. But the content is not good. The content is not good. He was talking about something about evil and meaning and he claims that that hitler was subconsciously actually aiming for his own suicide in a bunker and the destruction of germany like that was his kind of subconscious plan all along because he was motivated by subliminal Jungian death archetype and Thanatos or something like that, you know. So, that's the hot take, right? Hitler was aiming for that all

along. And I get the Jungian vibe, but I mean, it's just fundamentally a stupid proposition. He's putting it forward in a very erudite sounding way, but it's really just silly. So, it's just interesting to note that you know back when he was more functional like i hear a lot of people saying about this guru or that guru was oh that they were good but they went crazy right yeah and it's like yeah jordan peterson has gotten worse he was definitely more functional when he was younger pre-addiction pre-illness pre-notoriety but his ideas weren't any better like if that was silly no yeah i i completely agree because like i remember i got on the jordan peterson train

pretty late like it wasn't i was just ignoring him as much as possible but because you know it's just just tons of stuff i got the basic gist of what he was up to with, you know, the, the Canadian bill and misrepresenting that and all that. But the, when I actually spent any time with his content, I immediately was like, okay, this, I get this.

And the thing that kept hammering me was like the level of religiosity in it. Like it's not a normal amount of religiosity for a psychology lecture an empirical minded psychology professor at that supposedly so yeah i agree that he's definitely gotten more extreme more polemical and more cartoonish but he was always mixing in these kind of very speculative theories or anecdotes in with his lectures so he he's just like kind of refined his stick if you want like it's it's both more polished and more unhinged yeah yeah it's more exaggerated but yeah not so different the other thing you put me on to because we will be mentioning this fine fellow as well is uh some of the latest output in new discourses by our old friend james lindsey and he wins winder of the week like he is just like constant winder so like he doesn't actually

factor in because he's just constantly whinging so he's disqualified from competition now because he's just yeah so i he got me onto his latest little thing which is called a homily to young men and that was really interesting because he is now getting into kind of budget jordan peterson he even talks about making your own bed and like it's like a humble it is a homily to young men talks about the four talents and the parable and how you need to be a strong man so you can defend the women in your family in fact he spends the first 20 minutes talking about how you might need to fight a cloud leopard i think it is some kind of leopard um like cloud leopard

it's a particular kind of leopard what's it called uh i could be getting this wrong it doesn't matter but is it a cloud is it no it's a particular species of leopard it doesn't matter it was inspired by some news article i think where one of these leopards escaped from the zoo so it's saying you know you need to be ready to fight a leopard and talks a lot about how you got to channel your aggression and strength to positive ways and developing your strength and your skills and your coordination practice good grooming it was a little bit reminiscent of napoleon dynamite yeah it does sound like that both skills nunchuck skills yeah unicorn wrangling skills. Actually, you know, our previous guest, Frost, the martial artist guy,

James Lindsay has been prone to martial arts fantasism. Like, you know, he was always into the side of martial arts, which is a bit fanciful and, you know, death touches and all that kind of stuff. So this is on brand. It's kind of interesting. It's just like him repackaging his previous interests into his new framework. But that's kind of new for him. He's sort of maybe looking to get into the self-help, young men,

how to grow up to be a real boy yeah well i get the impression that like there are people doing what he does better than him now in the conservative like establishment chris rufo and and most of the politicians have kind of like he had an impact but his appearance on dr phil indicated like his overall value i think that the conservative movement so like you know charlie kirk and stuff can do his spiel better than him i i think so yeah he needs an angle but i feel like this is a losing proposition for him to try to encroach on jordan peterson's territory because well unless jordan peterson keels over and dies from eating too much meat or something i mean jordan peterson doesels over and dies from eating too much meat

or something i mean jordan peterson does it so much better than him his delivery is is weak frankly and jordan peterson's delivery is is very good so i don't see him stealing i don't see him taking down the big man anytime now but all he needs is to carve out a little sycophantic niche so there's plenty of space for them to frolic around in the walled gardens and you know as long as he's feeding a polemic audience that i mean we just saw dave rubin we just looked at dave rubin's content you're right you're right objectively bad and he has a large audience so you know it's true you don't need to be very good at this to make a living. Fair enough. Fair enough.

Yeah. But today, Matt, we're not decoding a guru. That will be for next time. Today, we are talking to a wise person. Oh, and also the mention of wise wisdom also should say that Matt and I took part in a debate about kind of the value of wisdom and the value of criticism, as we mentioned last time with John Vervacchi and Christopher Mastropietro, organized by Peter Lindberg at the store. So we mentioned that before. If anyone's interested in how that went, you can go see it. It's up on the YouTube. So you can see us put our arguments

for the value of criticism and whatnot to the team wisdom. We were dubbed team criticism. The stream's apt. And yeah, and it was fun. So I encourage everyone any any thoughts for you matt about that event uh not really no i guess it was all very amicable and fine and why wouldn't it be we come from different places and we delightful people we're scams

that's all right and we we we said what we thought they said what what they thought maybe some communication was established that's fine yeah so i i just have one little substantive point to make here i'm just i'm just like pinning it in at the at the end of our our lengthy introduction segment there's this thing where people talk about how people online are willing to be more critical than they are in person, right? To people's face, they'll, or like Sam Harris often says, you know, if he went for dinner with someone, he could have a much more reasonable conversation than he would have on Twitter, right? And then there's definitely something to that. But I just want to emphasize

as well, especially this is on my mind after hearing the Lex Friedman and Sam Harris conversation, that there's a lot of talk about the kind of distorting effect of interacting with people online and, you know, this veil of hostility and anonymity. But is enough said about the distorting effect of face-to-face communication and interpersonal dynamics? Because it's enough said about the distorting effect of face-to-face communication and interpersonal dynamics because it's definitely the case if you speak to someone directly and you're not in you know some stage confrontation or whatever that you know social niceties in many occasions will make people be more friendly more nicer be kind of more circumstantial in the way that they make points and that kind of thing. But it doesn't actually mean that that's like a truer representation of the person. It's just

like the reality of social niceties. So I just, I heard Sam and Lex talking about this and they were, you know, talking about the distortions of the online environment, which definitely exist, but they seem to be saying, you know, but if you sat and have dinner with someone you would you know that would be better it's like no but that's its own distortion like i could sit and have dinner with lots of people who actually are if you look at what they're promoting and stuff that it it it does deserve criticism and you probably should be harsher so yeah yeah just mentioning that it's not related to the vervac if we were the same matt and i are completely consistent online offline just to see him but you know other people now it is hard to be it feels rude just when you're talking to someone face to face to say look i have absolutely no idea what you're talking about or that I just fundamentally think that everything you're talking about is a waste of time, which I would have to do when talking to some people.

and civility and politeness and you know our common humanity all that stuff that sounds very appealing to people that have ever interacted on social media because everyone because everyone who has is is aware that there's definitely a problem there right in terms of elevated level of hostility and there's in-group and aggro dynamics that are toxic they're right about that they're right about that the immediate assumptions of bad that. The immediate assumptions of bad faith, et cetera, et cetera. But I agree with you, Chris, that it's the pendulum swinging too far the other way, which can be a problem too. So you and I are advocates for robust airings of grievances.

That's right. You can do that in a friendly way, maybe. Enter the marketplace of ideas. Boom, boom, boom. Fight your corner. Jab, crosshook, boom. Yeah. marketplace of ideas boom boom boom fight your corner jump cross hook boom yeah anyway that's not what we are doing today because we're having an enjoyable conversation not a confrontational conversation with travis view or at least the stage name persona Travis View, from QAnon Anonymous, somebody who has a lot of expertise around the subject of QAnon,

but conspiratorial networks in general and the whole online phenomenon, all the online communities. So, yeah. Yeah. And I was very happy to meet so-called travis view because i was surprised and pleased to find out that he he looks and talks like a like a young handsome ron swanson from parks and recreation i i really appreciated that about him so um yeah the the audio listeners can't see but the lighting that was on the video was suitable. It looked like Travis was in his bunker, kind of decoding the QAnon people and sending out his last broadcast.

You described him as someone you would want on your team in case of a zombie outbreak. He seemed like someone that could handle himself, be reliable, wouldn't panic. No. Knows how to handle a shotgun. I think that he already knows it's going to shit. So he seems like he's prepared and he's accepted it. So he's just getting...

We're not saying that Travis is a prepper. No. That's not what we're saying. But if he were to prep, he gives the impression that he would be good at it yeah that's right so yeah that's an interesting introduction for Travis but we'll now

hand over to ourselves in the past to speak to Travis directly yep that's where you get Travis okay Matt so to speak to Travis directly. Yep, that's what you get, Travis. Okay, Matt. So we have with us today, Travis View, who is probably familiar to a bunch of our listeners from the QAnon Anonymous podcast,

covering, like the name suggests, QAnon and adjacent communities and worlds. So, Travis, I've been a big fan of the QAnon Anonymous podcast for quite a while, but thank you for coming on. Yeah, thank you for having me, Christopher. And Matt, I think you're aware with a less obsessive tendency to listen to podcasts than me of the kind of work of Travis. We had Annie Kelly on previously covering her podcast on vaccines, but she's also a UK correspondent for QAnon Anonymous. Yes.

Now, I remember I'm not that old yet, Chris. I know what's going on. You don't need to fill me in. I'm just prompting you. I enjoy QAnon Anonymous as well, just not as frequently as you. I dip in. So, Travis, we probably don't need to spend

that much time on fairly basic things, but just in case, just in case there's some innocent soul who luckily has avoided the topic until... Can you give the the nutshell summary about q anon and and maybe where it has gone but since you've been following obviously that would take a very long time to do it justice but i mean the broad strokes sure the broad strokes you know i think that i think that you know q anon managed to to get pretty world famous after January 6th.

But for those who have managed to escape it, the basic premise is that, well, QAnon is both an elaborate conspiracy theory and an extremist movement. And it's based on this idea that Trump was secretly battling a cabal of pedophiles with the help of high-level military intelligence officials. And this, of course, included Hillary and George Soros and all the typical conspiracist villains. But they believe that Trump were getting help through these messages that were posted on 4chan and then later 8chan and 8ku, these image boards. And these messages, sometimes they were very strange and cryptic, and sometimes they were just rallying cries. They were just patriotic messages, or they were sort of, talking about how brilliant Trump is or something like that.

But QAnon followers, they believe that by decoding these Q drops and that's what they call the individual posts by decoding the Q drops. Now, there are over 4000 of them that they would be able to understand what's going on in this epic battle of good versus evil, which of course, Trump and the military intelligence officials were destined to win. That is the basic premise. One question that that brings up is given, you know, Trump unwillingly went out of the White House and, you know, there's been a couple of years of the Biden presidency and there are other figures kind of moving around in the conservative space. Does a lot of the kind of QAnon stuff still revolve around Trump or has it kind of expanded out of his orbit to encompass, you know, other political figures and that kind of thing? other political figures and that kind of thing no i mean the the q anon figures who remain are still pretty all in on trump now now you know i think that they they eventually noticed that um trump wasn't in the white house and some other guy was which kind of like you know what you think

would like throw a wrench in their plan. And they, they wound up resolving their cognitive dissonance in a lot of creative ways. You know, they claimed that they claimed, for example, that, that this, that actually Trump was the true president. And then all the sort of the film of Biden being in the Oval Office was actually filmed in Hollywood. And they, you know, they claim they came up with this elaborate theory. There's this QAnon follower named Patel Patriot who came up with this theory of devolution, which basically was premised on the idea that actually Biden was kind of like a puppet of Trump, but Trump was ultimately still in charge. So they resolved their cognitive distance in a lot of ways like that.

So they resolve their cognitive distance in a lot of ways like that. Others sort of like believe that, well, you know, they had to allow Biden to steal the White House this one time because this is all part of the plan. But of course, Trump is supposed to take it back and then finish what he started in his first term so travis you guys focus on really the pointy end of the conspiratorial and cray-cray spectrum with q anon anonymous and i think q anon yeah it's got that territory staked out pretty well from your little description before it it struck me how that there are many more moderate, I guess you would say, versions of that lurid conspiracy that are maybe more acceptable in slightly more normie communities online. I'm talking about stuff like there being some kind of deep state, there being some kind of institutional capture. You know what I'm talking about. I'm just wondering, how do you see the extreme stuff feeding into maybe more acceptable stuff?

Yeah, yeah. That's a good point. I mean, like all the conspiracy theories that came from QAnon, they all have precedent. Like the belief that there was a claim, for example, that Hillary Clinton was somehow responsible for the death of JFK Jr. in 1999 in that plane crash. And she also killed, you know, Seth Rich. This is a tragic story of the young man who was falsely accused of like hacking and leaking the DNC when when of course it was really really a russian operation that was uh leaked the wiki leaks um and this this the precedent for that is basically the clinton body count conspiracy theory which claimed that uh bill and hillary clinton as part of their rise to the political top was kind of like killing people left and right

now it sounds it sounds crazy but yeah sort of like there that was kind of the moderate version that you know bill and hilder clinton are these gangsters who like you are willing to hire men or maybe kill people themselves it was taken to a new extreme in q anon um you know and the belief in a belief in a like a deep state you know this uh this you know this concept um has existed you know since the um you know since the you know the rise of the fbi the cia you know there's you know there's some reality to it the belief the idea that people like um hoover um had more power than a lot of real politicians you know fbi directors who was able to um you know uh make

their way because there was this calcified power structure inside the federal government. And, of course, it was it was this entity within the federal government that was captured by the cabal and was doing the bidding of the worldwide pedophile ring. So it's always a lot more dramatic in the QAnon version than in the sort of the precedence it took from. I wonder, Travis, we've grappled with this a little bit in the kind of figures we cover and we talk about this emergent niche for secular gurus kind of like your your jordan peterson or your weinstein brothers right in the the kind of modern era but the more that we look at the topic of all those aspects aspects which are unique to the digital media ecosystem and all that, there's a lot which is in line with historical precedents.

And when you go back and look, you tend to start seeing a whole bunch of figures that you can actually draw not that greatly stretched parallels to figures like shaman's and this kind of thing like in in history and i i wonder with the kind of stuff you're covering q anon in some respects seems like a very modern conspiracy theory it's it's very online and involves you know online communities and i know there's versions that aren't down to earth, but it's politicians, right? It's not space aliens and lizards. So I'm curious about how far you see it as a distinctive contemporary movement

versus something which is just like a new form of the conspiracism, which will always exist, has always existed, and we're doomed to endlessly float about in. Yeah, you know, yeah, I think there were a couple of unique things about the way that this particular form of conspiracism operated. Number one is that the way it was gamified is participatory. A lot of people compare it to alternate reality games or ARGs. And it's not merely that you receive the wisdom from the guru, the person who knows better than you, and then you sort of absorb that knowledge in sort of clear sentences or even like semi

mystical sentences but these messages were extremely cryptic and they led to multiple divergent sometimes contradictory interpretations from the people who who learned the q drops and this uh this gave it a very addicting quality because you were a because the people who participated in the um in the activity, they were just learning things. It was like solving a puzzle and trying to Google search and trying to figure out what exactly these weird Q drops meant. And so it being unclear is always an interesting part of it.

The other thing that's sort of like um i think distinct from distinct about q anon that makes it a different from a lot of other classic conspiracism is this idea of the super competent hero who's going to take on the super competent villain because in you know classic conspiracism they always believe in this this basically this hyper powerful force who's really pulling the strings and you know in you know if you go back to uh you know the um you know the post um french revolution it was the illuminati and the freemasons who are really running things and they were really super powerful of course you know they said it could be lizards the deep state but there's there's

some sort of hyper competent um enemy who is so you know brilliant and smart they can do something like fake a moon landing and leave scant evidence of a fakery behind yep but and this is very kind of despairing worldview because it's um because it is how how how is it that you as a regular person, can fight against someone who is so powerful and brilliant as that? But Cullan says that, well, you have basically a friend in the military intelligence or the federal government. You have a hyper-competent hero who can best the hyper-competent villain. That, I think, creates a little bit more exciting conflict because all of a sudden there's this hope that the evil sort of like all-powerful entity that really pulls the strings can be defeated and thwarted and everyone can sort of see that your conspiracy theories were all true and all your friends and family can rush to you and say, you're right, you're right. So there's a lot more. So there's a lot of hope in QAnon because because of that yeah that's very interesting travis i was casting my

mind back to the full catalog of conspiracy theories i'm aware of and most of them don't feature that hyper competent secret hero figure like batman that is in there um he's going to put an end to this um malevolent force yeah i guess the other thing well i've forgotten the other thing chris do you i've got two things but the second one's gone that's right you know he said he's not old but the evidence is stacking up in the other column but that whole thing about people baking the q drops or playing their own part right in the the q anon conspiracy or the movement that's interesting because we've looked at in in the gurus we covered there's often these kind of um members of the community who emerge, who often start out as like quite strong defenders

of whoever their preferred guru is. You know, they'll make Twitter threads defending them or that kind of thing. But over time, they often grow their own sub audiences and can become like kind of minor gurus of their own, you know, create their own sub stack and so on. And it's been interesting watching that because it creates that weird feedback mechanism where there's incentives to constantly be interpreting content on your own and trying to grow a

community. So is that the same kind of dynamic that you're talking about? Like people creating their own minor followings, not just the hyper successful people? Oh, yeah. I mean, that's actually a huge part of like how QAnon operated because, you know, Q would release these cryptic Q drops and and there would be some very strange, sometimes very strange, sometimes they were straightforward, but a lot of them very strange and open to interpretation.

And that left a lot of, I guess, lay people kind of confused in how to make sense of what the heck they're talking about. And so as a consequence, there emerged these Q drop decoders. Sometimes they're called bakers and, uh, they would set up their, you know, their YouTube channel or their, uh, you know, their, their Twitter account. And they would, whenever there was a new Q drop, they would, you know, rush to rush to it. And they would say, okay, this is what this line means. And this is what this line means.

And they, as a consequence of like trying to decipher and uh clarify what they believe that the q drops meant they wound up you know developing huge followings um you know one of them was called praying medic his guy lives in arizona his real name is david hayes who got a pretty big following because he was very talented at um at um basically trying clarify and make sense of the, it helped if you had someone who was deep into it, who could help make sense of it for you. Yeah, you guys actually just spoke to the second thing that I was failing to remember, which is that crowdsourced, participatory, and constructed version of it. And I guess all conspiracy theories tend to be like that.

It's a little bit different from a religious ideology, which, you know, comes from a top down. It tends to be, tends to grow organically. But with QAnon, it's much more forward, isn't it? I guess it is like they're examining the entrails, the high priests and coming up with their interpretations of it. Very interesting. How much in terms of the psychological motivations of the people that are attracted to it, do you think? Is it the same as with all other conspiracies, like the same pattern of psychological drivers? Because it's obviously a big political movement, as you said, as well. is that I think that besides sort of the I guess like the classic reasons people were motivated to get into

conspiracism you know the quest for esoteric knowledge and like you know the sense of community and even like the social aspect or even like you know the hope that you know they tried to make sense of their lives if they're not very happy with where their lives are, that kind of thing.

I was going to say, oh, yeah, well, what really motivated, I think, a lot of people to get into QAnon specifically was the fact that I was many months into the Trump administration. It didn't feel like many of Trump's promises were being kept. Trump promised, for example, that he would drain the swamp and lock Hillary up. He was very clear on these points during the campaign. And his followers responded very positively. But it got to be October, November in 2017, and then all of a sudden there was this Mueller investigation that was starting to ramp up. And it seemed like Michael Flynn had to resign, and he was in some legal trouble. were going the right way, but they were so certain that because they got their man in

the White House, that they got this outsider to the Washington circle inside, that everything would be fixed. And then basically along came Q when they said that, no, no, no, no, there's a secret plan to make everything you want to have happen happen. Hillary is going to be locked up and we're going to expose all the evil doings of the deep state and the swamp will be drained, but it's going to take time because there's a secret battle. So you got to trust military intelligence. They know what they're doing. There are moves and counter moves behind the scenes that you won't see in the mainstream media.

And so for people who are otherwise perhaps feeling a little uncomfortable with how the Trump administration was shaping up compared to Trump's promises, that was very reassuring. That's a really useful framing of it because the way you describe it, it sounds like an awful lot like resolving cognitive dissonance, right? No, yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean've relied upon uh sort of uh festinger's work a lot and trying to make sense of why the q and i community does what they do yeah you know and like a specific example of that cognitive dissonance is with you know revered strongman leaders like the classic trope is uh you know it's never the czar's fault it's always got bad advisors right so there's these shadowy

cabals of alphabet soup agencies and so on are the other reasons for um why things aren't getting better the things aren't going as promised so yeah that fits quite nicely i think travis as well like one of the things that you guys do on the podcast is that you you go to various events right you inflict upon yourself the lived experience of of being at q anon events or uh various other um conspiracy themed events and it i think for me and matt it probably makes a nice change in the way like listeners enjoy us listening to scott adams or the weinsteins like i enjoy listening to you guys suffer through the um the the various conspiracy communities but i i want to ask you some stuff about the investigations and the way you guys do it.

But your most recent one on the Conscious Life Expo. So that crossover between the kind of traditional, maybe more like left-leaning alternative medicine and, you know, crystal healingianne will williamson kind of spirituality and then now encompasses the q anon stuff and also like maybe more components of like militia type beliefs alex jones type stuff from before and i know in in that case, you know, there's the podcast Conspiratuality, which has dealt with that. But I'm curious, from your experience, those worlds, how much are they merging together? Or is it still quite possible to distinguish the, you know, that no, these are the alternative health, like left leaning hippie types. And, and these are the, you know, that, no, these are the alternative health, like left-leaning hippie types, and these are the, you know, red-pilled conspiracy theorists. Yeah, you know, the way I always talk about it is that kind of like, you know, new-age thinking or esoteric thinking and conspiracism are kind of related in that they're both kinds of like stigmatized knowledge.

But they're both ways of seeing the world that's sort of like distinct from orthodox thinking about like history or science or politics. But they've always been kind of on easy bedfellows, partly because new age thinking is optimistic. You know, if you believe if you're kind of a new age you know um thinker then you believe that we can enter into this new more glorious age and we can ascend to become more enlightened to become more together become more peaceful it's very nice but conspiracism is very on the other hand is is very pessimistic it's very despairing it's a belief that you know we're being controlled by lizard people and we're unimaginably more powerful than than um than than we are or a secret cabal or some sort of Illuminati who far away control the entire world.

It's a bummer. But the thing is that they – I mean they – so they managed to – but they slowly I think converged and I think they really did so in a big way, you know, as a consequence of the pandemic. It's like there was, I think, a big sort of like a, I mean, blending between new age, you know, thinking and conspiracy thinking, or even like, you know, militant anti-government thinking. or even like, you know, militant anti-government thinking. All those sorts of things combined as a consequence of the, number one, the uncertainty that came with the fact that we're living through a pandemic, and also as a consequence of a lot of the government actions, you know, the sort of lockdowns, regulations, these sorts of things that people were very uneasy with. So, yeah, that's what I think we really saw that there was a lot of blending before then.

But I think that the pandemic really made the marriage official. The academic literature on complementary non-terminal medicine and that new age worldview that tends to underlie it. I mean, it has one other little cognitive aspect in common with conspiracies like QAnon,

which is that it has so much cognitive complexity and so much participationlie it. I mean, it has one other little cognitive aspect in common with conspiracies like QAnon, which is that it has so much cognitive complexity and so much participation in it. And that's an attractive feature in itself, of course. It's just an endless, exciting mystery for you to explore and participate in, as opposed to conventional medicine where you just get given some drugs or something like that. Now, the secret bit of that puzzle, of course, is vaccines and the correlation between anti-vaccine, vaccine skepticism and Wu health is really well established, very strong. And of course, anti-vax in particular has always had really strong conspiratorial and anti-government sort of libertarian style ideas associated with it so yeah it makes sense i'm curious travis from the way that you approach these communities and i

would encourage anybody that hasn't listened to listen to the some of the episodes where you do investigations because there's a organic nature to it and the honest thing about you know the the various insecurities and whatnot you know when you're doing like not not undercover work but like not openly trying to announce yourself to the the people there and i i was kind of curious like how do you see yourself and like the podcast that you do do you regard it as like a documentarian kind of thing or anti-QAnon activism or like you know I don't know anthropology ethnography I'm curious like they they have some thoughts about you, the Cured On community, but how do you see yourself? Yeah, you know, I really see it more than anything else as a way to satisfy my curiosity about it and try and learn about it as much as I can. More than anything else, if I'm being honest.

So I guess I do take, I guess, um, more than anything else, if I'm, if I'm being honest. So I guess, I guess I do take, I guess, kind of an academic approach. Uh, but what really got me into it was, I guess, a bafflement that, uh, that, uh, this, this weird online movement was becoming so popular. And, um, you know, I had, I mean, I had some sort of like experience in exploring fringe communities when, uh, I guess, you know, years ago in college, I became very interested in young earth creationism, these people who believe that the world is 6,000 to 10,000 years old and all of geology and biology is basically a lie and there's some sort of alternate science that can help you understand the true nature of the natural world. alternate science that can help you understand the true nature of the natural world um but yeah i started realizing that this movement as strange as it is becoming started becoming popular so i i really just wanted to like see see why do these try to figure out why do these people believe these things and um where do they gather and how do they acquire these beliefs and what are their

lives like and uh you know and uh where like what uh you know what i guess you know was the precedence for these kinds of beliefs and like where's the other element it's like where the hell is this going you know because you know i know for a fact that their um you know their promised storm of mass arrest is not going to happen so uh you know, we have to figure out what exactly is going to happen when they either accept or don't, that that's just not going to be reality. So that's, I mean, that's really what like motivates me. I mean, I don't see myself, you know, as an activist, as much as I am trying to, you know, satisfy my own curiosity and sort of like teach other people what I learn as I go along the way. Well, I might just say that I'd like those motivations for what it's

worth. I mean, it's very similar to me and Chris in that it's just interesting why people believe the things they do. And in our case, why people find certain kinds of things convincing when to yourself, you go, this is just how on earth could people find this convincing? And it becomes more of a fascinating puzzle that one wants to solve. And as a side effect, hopefully, I suppose we'd like to maybe encourage a little bit of critical thinking and skepticism and, you know, good things like that, but it's almost a side effect. I mean, one of the standard things that someone new to this stuff

who's looking at a young earth creationist or a q anon person or a flat earther uh is oh these people must be stupid how stupid are they and of course they're not are they yeah you know that's that's the that's the one thing i always say is that it's very um yeah if you really think that people believe in q anon because they are stupid then you're just not going to leads them to absurd conclusions. So I think that the cognitive flaw that leads them to these nonsense beliefs isn't a lack of intelligence. It's usually something else. It's usually some sort of epistemic framework that's unconventional, or perhaps it's some sort of emotional kind of draw that they get out of it that's more satisfying than, like I said, orthodox ways of thinking about politics and science and history.

One of the things that we frequently encounter is this kind of prioritizing of people's interpersonal relationship. Some of the guru people that we cover, especially if people have ever met them, but even just through podcasts or whatever, they emphasize that, you know, no, these people seem nice and they mean well. And, you know, whether or not it's actually accurate, like they say, you know, oh, they're humble, you know, and this kind of thing. So like Jordan Peterson throwing out various strategic disclaimers

are often referred to by people who, you know, have found what he told them helpful in some way, right? Like they don't focus on his climate change denial or whatever the latest thing he's waffling about on Twitter. And Matt and I have been at pains to kind of emphasize that interpersonally, you shouldn't assume that like people who hold ideologies that are harmful will be interpersonally unpleasant people right like if it's a neo-nazi maybe it's but even then you know

neo-nazis still have to have barbecues and like go to the supermarket so i i feel like there's a mistaken impression that anybody that's into it will just constantly be un the street and you're like oh that guy's in the queue you know uh unless they're wearing some flamboyant headdress or that kind of thing yeah you know it's funny it's like i often talk a lot about um how you know q don i think it does technically meet the definition of an extremist movement as is is defined by J.M. Berger, who wrote this book called Extremism. But it's really, I think, and I really think it's generally the least sort of like dangerous kind of extremism. Now, I want to be clear, like QAnon has caused horrible damage. It's alienated families. There was one case in which a QAnon follower, a surfer who lived in Southern California, killed his children. There's been kidnappings. There's been murders.

So there actually has been QAnon-motivated violence. Of course, there's also been QAnon-motivated violence in the case of the January 6th insurrection. So I don't want to seem like I'm downplaying it. But compared to a lot of other extremist movements, I don't think it's quite as dangerous. And I know this because, like I said, I've been to a lot of QAnon events, like QAnon conventions, in which I am recognized by the organizers. But despite that, I've never really felt threatened. You know, that's not the case if you are, for example, a reporter on, let's say, white supremacists. You know, if you're an extremist who covers white nationalists and you go to a white nationalist

rally and the organizers spot you, you might be in danger. But that just wasn't my experience. They recognized me and they shook my hand. But yeah, it is very interesting. And I think the reason for that is that generally QAnon followers are people who really want to see violence done in the sense that they often fantasize about these mass executions or Hillary being hanged at Gitmo and these kinds of things. But they don't want to do the violence themselves. They always fantasize about the military or the justice system taking care of it for them. They don't want – because they believe that there's a plan to basically do the violence that they want to have done in order to fix society, but through these official channels. You know, white nationalists generally don't believe that. They don't believe that the justice system or the military are going to fix things for them. They lore that talks about elites feasting on the blood of young children, right? The kind of pedophile networks. And Aaron often appears to highlight the connection to, you know, the blood libel and the kind of anti-Semitic conspiracies of old. So I'm curious to what extent you would regard that kind of anti-Semitic strain as like a key feature of QAnon, or is it more that it's just like a parallel track that some people can hop onto? You know, I think that, I think generally, you know, QAnon is basically as anti-Semitic as you want it to be. I think that if you are someone who is perhaps a little uncomfortable with anti-Semitism, I think QAnon actually gives you enough plausible deniability to convince yourself that that's not a component of it. But if you are, you know,

if you are a little bit uncomfortable with, uh, with, um, you know, the Jews, then, uh, you can be part of QAnon and sort of, you can instantly recognize the, uh, the canards that, uh, are there, you know, key to QAnon. So, you know, of course, you know, I think that, I think that QAnon followers, they often do this kind of thing where they say, no, no, no. It's like, obviously, we don't hate Jews. There are some bad Jews. There's Epstein and there's George Soros, but those are the bad Jews. But Jewish people the bad Jews. But, like, Jewish people generally are okay.

You know, they try to convince themselves that, you know, the kind of, like, anti-Semitic subtext isn't as present as it actually is. Yeah. So I guess on that note a little bit about these sort of dark forces in American society, as you can hear from our accents, we're not American. You might not have picked up on that. It's subtle. They're subtle.

Yeah. A little something. That's strange. I thought you meant a little south or something. You know, something. Very small town in the south. So, I mean, on our show and our public stuff we say we we generally advise against people catastrophizing and you know because it's easy to get the impression if you're on places

like twitter that the world is going to hell in a handbasket too sweet and the united states in particular in terms of the political landscape and the cultural divisions etc there are certainly some people who feel that um the country is on the precipice of very bad things and then you can also make the argument that yes it's it's a bit of a mess but it's always been a mess everything is basically fine if you're focusing on the fringes so this is kind of a more casual question rather than a q anon type question but but like, what's, what's your feeling as an American? Like, is there a serious emergency happening sort of politically, or is it kind of just the world spinning as usual? You know, that's a, that's a, that's, that's actually not an easy question to answer. You know, there's, there's a professor of political science who really studies

conspiracy theories. His name is Joseph Uph usinski he wrote a couple great books like conspiracy theories and the people believe them and he he does he did a lot of like interesting studies basically about um about like how prevalent conspiracism is in society and how how he did this is that basically he take a look took a look at um uh basically letters to the editor and newspapers going back all the way to like 1880. And he checked how often conspiracy theories appeared in those letters, reasoning that like the more popular conspiracy theories were, the more often they would appear. And so using this methodology, he sort of like tracked sort of the rate of conspiracism. And what he found was that like there are times when conspiracism. And what he found was that there are times when

conspiracism becomes more popular. For example, it spiked in popularity after the death of JFK, unsurprisingly, after the assassination. But generally, over the course of the 20th century and even before, the popularity of conspiracy theories is very, very steady. We always try to convince ourselves that we live in an especially conspiracist age, but that's not necessarily the case. You know, I often point out that the very first third party in the United States, all the way back in the 1820s and the 1830s was called the Anti-Masonic Party. And it was dedicated to the proposition that the Masonic Lodges, enthrall the Illuminati, were basically plotting to upend the United States.

And they wound up – it was a totally conspiracist party, and they did pretty well. They wound up actually controlling about 10% of the House of Representatives at their peak. They had a few governorships. So I don't think we're quite at the point where there are QAnon followers who are governors of states. But there's some precedent for that. I think there are some strange things happening. precedent for that. No, I think there are some strange things happening. Again, I point to January 6th, which is certainly an unprecedented event, which was driven by conspiracism. But I think

that what allowed that to happen was the fact that we had an openly, aggressively conspiracist president. And that kind of changed the dynamic a great deal but um i think that yeah i think that generally um you know i'm really interested in this in this idea that conspiracism is just part of the political landscape it's just something that's just in the background always there affecting sometimes feeding into mainstream politics um and um as is is not some sort of weird anomaly of the internet age it's you know it's changed as a consequence of communications technology as you know it's like you know but um but generally it's just something that's just always there and frankly always will be

i'm very sympathetic to that point of view you articulated there's there's a book by a historian joanne b freeman called the field of blood violence in congress and the road to civil war and it it's covering you know congress in the era just before the civil war and it's it's a it's one of those things that's a good reminder that like things were bad in previous eras especially like you know, in that case, in American politics. And that it's easy, I think, in a way to get caught up in your lifetime, what's changed. So like, Matt and I, like you, Travis, I think as well, have had like a long standing interest in conspiracism. And we've observed in our lifetime it move from

the fringes to the u.s presidency to like uh in the covert era like a very strong cultural force but i think when you take a longer perspective like you're talking about or or like uh annie did in the you know the vaccine documentary series she produced, you see that it just comes in waves. And there are moments in time where it's a much stronger force, and then it kind of recedes. So I think when you were born, people that have lived through other waves of conspiracism, like the JFK assassination or whatever, maybe it doesn't strike as dramatically different. That's one of the things that I think about to try and keep myself sane about the current moment.

Though when I find out that QAnon is quite popular in Japan, I sometimes find it hard to accept that level of sanguine uh response yeah i mean yeah i i feel the same way i i do i do i do want to like one of the things i never really wanted to do when i was doing the podcast was big up be a fear monger um i wanted to be you know as honest and straightforward as i could about the dangers associated with an extremist movement and whenever there was violence associated with the movement. One of the very first instances happened all the way back in June of 2018 when a man basically had an armed standoff on the Hoover Dam Bridge because he thought there was going to be this inspector general's report report which would basically reveal all the deep state crimes that he wanted to release so he was you know there's lots of like you know i want to be want to be honest about the dangers associated with like this extremist movement but i didn't want to like you know i didn't want to you know

say like it's like this is the you know the greatest threat the country has ever faced and you know that kind of stuff because then you're no better than alex jones yeah i mean we often occasionally get the question of like oh so what will happen before when all the gurus you like you've covered them all that's like no that's one that's never going to happen but two if it did happen it would be a nice outcome like if suddenly there weren't like kind of manipulative gurus and something bad would probably have had to happen for that to occur but a like if it just was able to happen it wouldn't be like matt and i were deeply upset that we no longer have people to cover and i guess you guys have the the same vibe that like you're not you're not looking forward to the next version of like q that

emerges but it's a cf bet that there's going to be other versions and variations of this kind of movement sure yeah yeah like if yeah if we get to a point where somehow uh conspiracism is all but eliminated in american discourse and everyone sort of approaches their politics through rational policy and like, you know, respectful civil discourse. That, of course, would be unprecedented. But we might have to pivot the podcast, but I don't have much hope that that's actually going to happen.

I guess, you know, the, your, your podcast in a way, well, not in a way is, is kind of an ensemble cast, right? You, you have different, the different hosts have different interests, different specialities. And as a result, I think partly you guys are able to feed off each other's interests and, you know, like people take the lead on different kinds of stories. But I was curious because, you know, in our case, we sometimes cover relatively wholesome figures like Carl Sagan or this Jesuit priest, Anthony de Mello. We look at people that are, you know, like Gwyneth Paltrow, you might have criticisms, but she's not exactly as terrible as Scott Adams or that kind of thing.

So in your case, though, it's rare that you're covering something, you know, relatively wholesome or that has, you know, a kind of positive empowering element to it so i'm just curious travis like you cover this day in day out week in week out for years now so how do you and your fellow co-hosts cope aside from like copies amounts of drugs and alcohol sure Sure. Yeah. I actually, I got into, uh, hiking and photography. I, uh, that's, I, I got a, um, so that's, that's what I do. Cause I, I, I've realized that it's the, it's the absolute opposite of what, what has turned into my day job. Cause last through, through QAnon anonymous. Yeah. Basically I, I spend a lot of time going online looking for ugliness and absurdity. But when I go hiking with a camera, then I'm out in the real physical world

trying to look for beauty. And so that helps me a lot. And so, yeah, I have an Instagram. It's Logan Strain Photography. LoganStrain is my real name. And so, yeah, so I post my photos there. That's an excellent policy, Travis. I'm the same. I've got some very wholesome pursuits. Chris, on the other hand, he was born in the darkness, and he's going to die in the darkness.

That's right. But I have, well, you as well, but I'm forced out of the darkness on occasion by my children going to play parks around Tokyo. So that kind of counts as an excursion. But I don't get to do the wandering around nature and swimming with sharks as much as you do. So that's fair. That's fair. I had a question, Travis, partly piggybacking on the point that you made about the followers.

And I'm sure this is hard to quantify, but I'm a little bit curious about the general demographics of the people that are into Q, like whether it's associated with, you know, particular age range, particular ethnic groups, or whether cuts across the the kind of alternative health area typically tends to be associated with people a bit better off and maybe in america at least like white the kind of stereotyped image is as you know the gwyneth paltrow type figure so with q anon is that the Like, is there an association with working class, middle class, or does it transcend those kinds of lines? Yeah, you know, it is really shocking the way in which it transcends lines. I mean,

there are people who are financially struggling, but there are also, I see people who are, who are financially struggling. Uh, but there are also, I see people who are one of those popular sort of QAnon gurus is this guy named in the matrix. And he was a former sales executive, you know, he's essentially retired and now he's just basically does QAnon stuff. I mean, yeah, there, there are more than a few instances of like, you know, you know, literal millionaires who, who get, uh, who get, who get red pilled. So, I mean, it's, it's really, it's, I think that, you know, there's this, um, I know there's this, there's this thesis that, um, that, uh, you know, that like conspiracy theories are for losers in the sense that if you feel constrained, um, if you feel like you have no power, um, then, you know, conspiracy theories are a way to help you make sense of your powerlessness and give a scapegoat for your powerlessness.

But something about QAnon, I guess, I've noticed that it is something that transcends class. I might ask that question in a slightly different way, which is I was sort of comparing it mentally to the Flat Earth movement that I did. I wasted a lot of time doing a deep dive on. And there's a lot of overlap with the Young Earth Creationist Movement. So, you'd be familiar with the vibe. And like, for example, in that case, I noticed that a very large proportion of the Flat Earthers were Young Earth Creationists, very hardcore Christians. And, you know, that's a separate belief system, but it happened to be correlated with it in people for understandable reasons. That's not to say there wasn't a minority that were sort of completely different, you know, that had

different motivations. I think they were like sort of basement dwelling nerds who were just attracted to the sort of weirdness of it. Now, with QAnon, if you had to pick one thing, because I mean, just looking from the outside, it seems to be correlated with obviously right-wing politics it might be correlated with religiosity it might be correlated well you've actually eliminated class but i was thinking maybe education i was wondering if you just had to even though it's different from any of these other things if if you had to notice one correlate could is the one that stands out yeah yeah if we i mean if we were to sort of like you know the exclude you know the um new age kind of esoteric theosophical kind of believers uh there were i mean it was you know i think heavily uh evangelical christians and a lot of

the q a lot of the q drops they have bible verses uh they say they say god wins and they believe in you know there's going to be a great awakening and of course that that the great awakening is a name for a a few periods of religious revivals in the united states because already has this connotation that you know it's going to bring more people to god so uh yeah so i think you know people who are deeply evangelical Christians already primed to believe in this, you know, this epic battle of good versus evil and a lot of the other things that QAnon sort of lore is trying to promote. I kind of half guessed you would nominate that because it does fit well with the other

interesting belief systems that we see i guess a follow-on and this is not a dig at americans we're not above taking shots at americans on this podcast but this will be the first time we never do that so but this is the honest question which is i mean do you think that could be the sort of undercurrent, like a cultural vulnerability, you might say, in America? Because America is a bit more Christian, a bit more, what's the word, evangelical than most other places in the weird constellation of countries. And there's obviously also that deep skepticism towards government. Do you reckon there's a bit of a cultural vulnerability there in America, especially? Or is it just a coincidence that America is a big country

and dominates the infosphere anyway, so we're always going to be more aware of stuff from America? What do you reckon? Yeah, of course. I mean, yeah, I mean, this is, it's been long observed that there's, you know, there's a paranoid style to American politics. And I think this is partly due to the natural, you know, skepticism of government institutions and partly due to, you know, the sort of the, you know, deep belief in sort of religious freedoms, the especially the fear that there's government's going to encroach on your religion or something terrible is going to happen. And so, yeah, I think that, you know, there's, I mean, yeah, obviously there's, this is partly why I'm, I think it's, is very, I think it's very interesting about, um, you know, the subject matter. I think that

there's something, there's something, you know, there are lots of things I think that America does, uh, better than anywhere else. We make the most spectacular blockbuster films, and we do conspiracy theories very well. You build guns. You have some of the best Tex-Mex in the entire world. Those four things. That's it. Nothing else.

Just those four things that's it nothing else just those four one thing i'm i'm also curious about in the figures that we cover there's two things which are really prevalent and and like highly valued not not explicitly but it just keeps coming up in all the content that we look like at um that the people that become guru figures you know they have charisma right that intangible quality usually but in in a lot of ways that manifests as a real skill with like verbal metaphor and like verbal fluency right they're able to just kind of roll uh for extended periods of time on on whatever topic they choose. And that's usually combined with a deep, hard-to-fathom level of narcissism

where they assume that whatever they believe is correct and is important for people to hear about. And we see these two features reappear. But when I look at a figure, for example, like Ron Watkins, right? The thing that this is one of the people who is credibly suggested to be behind at least some portion of the Q drops. And he doesn't strike me as someone with verbal fluency, charisma. He might be narcissistic, but much more of a kind of odd, nerdy guy. So I'm wondering how much he's an outlier and how far that's typical, the kind of influencer people.

Do you see the same kind of characteristics emerge or is it different? No, you know, here's the thing, is that Ron Watkins, assuming that he is in fact the person who controlled Q when it was a quiet, when Q moved from 4chan to 8chan, and this is sort of,

there's a theory that was promoted by the film Q into the – or the docuseries Q to the Storm by Colin Hoback. He did most of his work from behind the computer. So in this case, the followers didn't even really know who he was. And he sort of like promoted these ideas through, you know, text in the Q drops. So he didn't have to rely upon his personal charisma so much. And we actually know that, you know, when he, when Juan Roquence, he actually ran for Congress in a district in Arizona here, and he came in dead last in that primary, he came in seven out of seven. So we saw that when he, you know, stepped out from behind the computer, he wasn't able to wow an audience so well. But, you know,

I think it's different for the people who were, like I said, the decoders, the bakers, the people who were sort of became the influencers within the QAnon space. Like I mentioned, that guy named In The Matrix, his real name is Jeffrey Patterson. He was a former sales executive, of course, which was a job that requires a great deal of verbal fluency and charisma. And that naturally translated to his job as sort of like a podcaster and sort of QAnon promoter. He was able to do it pretty well. well i had a feeling that you know it would be a bad idea to take ron watkins as illustrative of anything but ron watkins but um the so there there was another uh there was another thing that i wanted to ask you which i i'm not sure of myself. So in your coverage related to COVID conspiracies and that, we see a little bit of overlap with figures like Brett Weinstein and Robert Malone, Peter McCulloch.

They appear on Joe Rogan, but they're also clearly figures at least as significant in anti-vaccine areas and with Mickey Will mickey willis or dell big tree that there's there's kind of a crossover in the anti-vax world but the people that we look at are more focused on figures like elon musk or peter teal or um you know the the weinstein's jordan jordan peterson uh the intellectual dark web in some respects, at least some of the spheres that it tangented off to. And I'm curious, do you see connections with those figures and those kind of communities? Or is that just a separate tangent? is that just a separate tangent? Because I haven't, I just haven't noticed much talk about Elon Musk or Jordan Peterson in your content. Yeah, you know, funny, we actually did do Elon Musk episode years ago, before he bought Twitter.

But I think like, generally, like, those kinds of gurus are, I guessus don't interest me as much. I guess the only thing that those kinds of people, like I guess the intellectual dark web and QAnon have in common is like disdain for the mainstream media and government and that kind of thing. and that kind of thing. But I think that with conspiracism, there's a lot less of a self-help kind of component. A lot of these people are selling an idea to make yourself a better, understand the world in sort of an unorthodox way to make yourself a better person know understand the world world and sort of an unorthodox way to make yourself a better person you know um healthier more fit and you know smarter more clever whatever

better relationships whereas that conspiracism it's it's really more um less about the self and like more political if anything it's more about like you know just being a little bit having a little bit better inside info about like how the world really works than the next person. I might make another comment disguised as a question here, because I think those similarities and differences are really interesting between what you guys focus on and what we do. Because on one hand, there's a fair bit of overlap. There is the cultish component to QAnon. It's certainly very much anti-establishment. There is a sense of grievance and there is this, we call it the Cassandra complex, but it's that, you know, that sense

of imminent danger that there's things are building to a climax and we have to prepare for it. And obviously the conspiracies that, and QAnon is just the archetypal example of it. We also see it in all of our gurus. But, you know, from what you've been talking about, it's really clear to me that this is a purely crowdsourced thing. Whether or not we eventually find out who Q is, it's kind of irrelevant, isn't it? Because from what you said, it sounds like it's very much a crowdsourced phenomena. There may be individual people that rise to prominence and manage to set themselves up as a bit of a high priest, but it's a crowdsourced phenomena.

Am I drawing that distinction correctly, do you think? Yeah, there are lots of QAnon followers that call themselves Anons, and a lot of them prize their ability to do their work without actually having their, their name or their face known. And there are some, there are some like really big QAnon followers who have still have never been docs. There's one called storm is upon us who, you know, we had like,

you know, hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter before he was finally banned and he was just gone. And we just never figured out who he was exactly. But yeah, there's this, the thing is that when you're a not when you're a non there's the there's this kind of like flattening effect where um you know it

doesn't matter who you are you know you could have a small a small audience a small following or a big one but the point is that you're getting the message out they're they believe that you know they're doing this this basically they're engaging in information warfare or narrative warfare where they're battling the evil cabal narratives and replacing it and redpilling the normies and making people more aware of the truth. I think that there's this greater emphasis on the information that they think is so crucial for people to understand rather than building up a personality. Now, of course, a lot of people did build up quite a lucrative following as a consequence of QAnon. But for, I think for a lot of like, yeah, I guess mid-level participants, that's not a big priority. I realized, Travis, that we should not keep your evening too late. So I'll wind towards,

stop peppering you with questions, but there's been a whole bunch of like figures rise in prominence and disappear or fade away and there's been concerning movements that you covered i forget the guy's name the the one who does the numerology and had like a community i think in las vegas in a hotel um yeah you're thinking of a man by, man by the name of, uh, Michael Protsman. And, um, yeah, he had a cult. Uh, he has a cult actually called negative 48. It's based in Dallas. Um, and, uh, we actually, we, we spoke to, um, a woman whose sister basically fell into the negative 48 cult for an episode of the QAnon anonymous. fell into the negative 48 cult for an episode of the q anon anonymous um and that is yeah that was really sort of concerning development because like you know um it was a lot different is is that's that was really the more sort of clear-cut kind of like classic cult style i guess um more so than sort of general q anon because we had this weird charismatic leader who did, you know, Gematria and numerology and like claim that they were, you know, deciphering, you know,

secret messages and they did weird things like they claimed that, you know, JFK Jr. would return on Dallas on this particular day. And of course, he did not come. So yeah, that spun out. That's still going on. It's a small cult. There's a woman on Twitter named Karma2023 who follows their developments. But yeah, that is like a real disturbing cult that sort of spun out of QAnon.

Yeah. And again, I'd encourage people to go and listen to the various investigations you guys have done, because you've covered a whole bunch of those movements. And actually one of our previous guests, Elgin, who covered the kind of offshoot of the Moonies, I came across him on your podcast. But the question I wanted to ask is, are there any, like, not necessarily, you know, movements that are just cultish or whatever, but like in the contours of the QAnon world, is there anything that has recently come to your attention, which is new or is kind of like something that you would flag up that seems emerging or different, concerning?

Anything that you're very concerned about? You know, there's another one that we've actually, we've devoted two episodes on, is the Romana D'Lo cult up in Canada. There's a woman who claims that she is the queen of canada and she has her own special flag and she like rents an rv and she makes her own currency and she has like they she she you know she drives around with the this following and uh she convinces her followers for example that they don't need to pay their mortgage or their utility bills because she, as queen of Canada, has has all that taken care of for them.

And that ends as disastrously as you imagine. basically you know really wreck their lives because they believe that this woman is somehow took over the country and is now solving all the the social problems uh so that's that's that's another one that's essentially a weird q anon offshoot cult that's ongoing and um very disturbing i have come across that lady and um it is appealing to have somebody take care of your taxes and we recommend that that's that's the message look um thanks travis for making time in your evening we'll to speak to us um we'll let you get back to it it's it's great to have a bit of time to speak to somebody shares their interest in why people believe strange things. And congratulations on the success with QAnon Anonymous. It's a fun and engaging delivery, and it manages to explore the sort of fascinating and disturbing phenomena of QAnon in a way that doesn't leave people feeling hopelessly depressed.

So congratulations. Most of the time. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. And that was Travis. That was QAnon anonymous host, Travis Vue, discussing a variety of topics.

So many. So many. A man who knows a thing or two about QAnon. You would have to agree, I think, Chris. Yes, yes. And a man after our own heart in the approach, I think he adopts the looking at these kind of topics. So I find it a very informative exchange. Yeah, for me.

Mainly one direction. Yeah, mainly one direction. You know, one of the more interesting things um he pointed out was how he wasn't like too concerned just about q anon as a as an extremist fringe group which it is in many ways but it's he wasn't quite as concerned about q anon as some of these other kind of militia type scary groups and how he do you remember chris how he explained how they because their dark conspiracy also includes kind of like this fantasy of this q figure and the various other agents working and trump yeah and that these fantastical figures were going to sort everything

out it's got like a salvation aspect to it as well, which means that they're a bit more passive and a bit more recreational about it. So I thought that was interesting. I didn't know that about QAnon. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, I think it helps to just think of these things as having a variety of strands in them. Like this a little bit reminds me of whenever

I was doing my research on religious traditions. And, you know, people have this idea, if you say like Taoism of a specific tradition, right. But,

but when you look even, especially like in the early days, it's all these different groups, right. That like take different things seriously, have different approaches. And there's, there's kind of cores which go together, but you can kind of distinguish out groups

that have very different characteristics, even if there's commonality. And I think QAnon is a bit like that, that there are groups which are definitely more sinister, more concerning. None of them are particularly good, let's face it. But there are versions which I think are more like the traditional JFK conspiracy theorists that, you know, like a bit recreational,

ancient alien kind of stuff. I mean, it still has that kind of right wing militia aspect to it which is concerning but but but i i do think there's there's a bunch of different strands within it and that there are ones which are less concerning or or at least you know yeah not more extreme than stuff we've seen before one thing i've never understood about q and i chris maybe you know the answer to this is why all the funny costumes and i'm not just talking about the guy with the bear and the horns uh but you know often with interviews and stuff like that with q and on people they're often wearing extremely flamboyant surreal costumes that seem to bear

little connection to anything apart what's going going on? It's just Americans, Matt. Americans, of course. It's a big dress. You know, that's just their normal attire. It's like they're all street performers in Las Vegas. What's going on? Well, that's probably part of it too, you know, Las Vegas and Florida being overrepresented in those. But yeah, you know, maybe they absorbed through osmosis

the peacocking of the pickup artists. So they've all got their, you know, a big clock or their noose costume or whatever, you know, that could be it. But I think it's just the people that are on the news are usually, you know, selected for a particular effect. Okay. Yeah. No, it's a Trump rally, like a Trump rally.

There's bound to be some normal people there. Probably. Yeah. I liked your first diagnosis, Americans that's it it's just americans yeah it is they're all crazy all crazy yeah they're all just every jack of them they're all they're all saying awesome and incredible that was superb and these you know kind of words that you don't need to use for anything yeah they're always asking you like how is your lunch like yeah they're always asking you like how was your lunch

and telling you to have a heavenly day and things like that what's wrong with them don't trust any of them anyway we like americans um so we're just having fun we're just having fun. We know we talked to the Robert Wright about this. There's lots of different varieties of Americans. Some of them aren't like that. So that's some of them, a couple of you. Um,

no, Matt, after that, after alienating a substantial portion of our listenership, let's alienate more by reviewing the reviews that we've received recently. And I will say, still, people haven't done a fantastic job of generating new reviews. I still have a limited selection to go from,

but I've got a good one and a bad one for this week, so it's okay. It's okay. But okay but you know come on well you've got one job everyone's sick of reviewing us the people i know to have done it yeah just just don't fall prey to the bystander effect. Don't assume someone else will do it. It's on you. Good try, Chris. All right, read them out. Give us the first one.

Right. So the negative one, I like this. Infuriating. One star out of five. This is by Andrew Walton. So, you know, brave man left his real name, if that is your real name. Wow.

Your interview with Sam Harris was was painful you're disingenuous and cynical and your holier-than-thou attitude makes people hate educated people like you you're a bad faith interlocutor plain and simple now matt i thought that was unfairly targeted at you you know in the the Sam Harris interview, I thought you were relatively reasonable. But we get this feedback a lot that you were just hammering Sam in that. So, you know. You're my hate magnet, Chris.

You just have taken all the hate and it makes you stronger. I like it. Yeah, look, I think that phrase, bad faith interlocutor. No, that's pretty good. Yeah, but he's think that phrase, bad faith interlocutor. That's pretty good. Yeah, but he's just crypted from somewhere. That's one of these stock phrases.

Are you accusing him of being a GPT critic, Bob? I don't know, just an NPC. Oh, yeah, that's important. Chat GPT could do it better. But well, my issue with this is not like as a review, you know, content analysis wise, I'd actually give it pretty good marks because I think consistent message,

concisely delivered. Yep. And, you know, not too much beating around, get straight to the point. It's good. And a real name. That's what I like to see. My objection, though, Matt, is what is he doing?

How long ago did we talk to Sam Harris? It's like years ago now, isn't it? It's like five years, ten years ago. Who knows how many? He's listened to a very old episode and then been like, I must leave my review about this episode. And just, come on. Chris, come on.

That's fine. I mean, what's the back catalog for if not for people to listen to it? But if you go back and make yourself angry, that's your own fault. It's not our fault. So I feel if you go into the back catalog, it's on you. People have warned you what is going to be there and if you're a sam harris fan we need to put a trigger warning because i'm just loving this because you know what's going to happen you know the internet is forever once the content is up there it's in

the cloud it's never giving away one day you're going to be in a retirement home strapped to your vr milking machine or whatever it is or i've got you in and you're gonna look at your little device whatever they're using then and you're gonna be getting hate for the sam harris interview it'll say why did you disparage the 56th president sam ai bot harris the interview you conducted in 2021 or whenever it was um but yeah so that was the negative review matt we'll we'll accept that we graciously accept that we welcome the feedback thank you for your comments andrew and now for somebody sensible um and this one says, pressured to review. And this is from Yebra74.

Five stars. That's the critical point. But it says, terrible podcast, five stars. If I could, I'd give more. Good. Good. Okay. Yeah.

It's a, you know, one of those modern irony post things, you know, the kids today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's considered clever by the kids these days to be contradictory. Well, yeah, and by us because we told people to do that. They can write negative reviews and leave five stars. That's the way to do it. Yeah, but they need to elaborate on how terrible we are whilst giving us a five-star review and i think they're expressing their excitement about hearing more um it's gonna confuse some people though because we've got quite a few of those reviews

so much if you're reading it and you're just like this is the worst podcast ever five stars like this is a podcast that's listened to by people with multiple personality disorder or something. Yeah, yeah. Oh, and we did get a review that called us a pair of beta meals attempting to validate themselves by tirelessly repeating their propaganda. And the title of that review is Beta Meals. I like that one. But crucially, just to check whether it's tongue-in-cheek or not how many stars one star and it's a fan genius so it's a legitimate we're legitimate beat them

males and no sorry sigma sigma come on obviously sigmas so yeah but that's uh that's our reviews for this week matt did you enjoy that that's okay yep i'll take it i'll take it very good all right tell us about our lovely lovely patrons oh yeah i will i will and yeah i'm still i just i'm always very upset about the tracking on this it's just a constant source of pain for me but you know what you should have done you know what you should have done instead of promising that you're going to get to everyone it should have been a lucky dip like every week what we do is we read out whatever five random names and it's like a it's like a random prize draw every week and you know you could get called

out twice three times five times you could be one of the lucky ones you could just never get you know the tension the frisson would attract people well that would have been useful but i can't well maybe it might you know we'll have a chat let's let's discuss this further but um so uh i'm gonna i'm gonna shout out people that That's what I'm going to do, Matt. It is actually much like you described. It's a lottery. It's a lottery. And so this week, conspiracy hypothesizers,

we have Hugo Hewson, Ed 74, Tom HeHeMan, Nonico3, Matthew Benjamin, Fenner, Dan Spencer, Peter Moon,

Lalit Varada, Lalit Varada, oops, Al Usher, Alric Lopez, and Xiaoxiao Li. Well done, Chris. Thank you, everybody. Conspiracy hypothesizers, Matt.

And just for a little change. I feel like there was a conference that none of us were invited to that came to some very strong conclusions. And they've all circulated this list of correct answers. I wasn't at this conference. This kind of shit makes me think, man, it's almost like someone is being paid. Like when you hear these George Soros stories, well, he's trying to destroy the country from within.

We are not going to advance conspiracy theories. We will advance conspiracy hypotheses. yes so that is our conspiracy hypothesizers uh revolutionary thinkers matt you know them revolutionary geniuses chris but yes it depends on the week when we refer to them as revolutionary geniuses or thinkers they're actually you know one thing about them is they're quite sometimes hard to detect. You have to look carefully. But I did see one Emma. I also saw Anna Garrett, Martin Pelchat, Paul Bowman. And then I was looking around and found british waters and and last matt i saw patrick nelson with the bullshido um account so so yeah that's that's what i saw

on our revolutionary thinkers geniuses uh whatever the case might be that's good that's what I saw on our revolutionary thinkers, geniuses, whatever the case might be. That's good. That's good. Well, we see you. We see you. You are seen. And for a little throwback, maybe you can spit out that hydrogenated thinking and let yourself feed off of your own thinking. What you really are is an unbelievable thinker and researcher

a thinker that the world doesn't know that was the old clip matt i just thought you know just for a little change and bring back the other one you know just messing things up well a variety to spice a life i mean the consequence not as good as the new ones, but still, it's good to mix it up. So now the Galaxy Brain level, the tippy top of the Patreon hierarchy, the most actualized, in many ways, they're the top of the competence hierarchy. First among equals, yes.

Yeah. And again, difficult to spot, difficult to spot in certain ways so we have sean chinnery we have they're a bit rare rarer than we would like you're right you're right they're very hard to spot in this particular format that I have things. Jesus, they're rare, Matt. That's okay. The kind of things you wouldn't even see across multiple pages as you scrolled. There's one. Kim Young Poon.

Kim Young Poon. So thank you to Kim. Ben. Maybe that's enough. There's one more kim then maybe that's enough there's one more but there's going to be one more lurking lurking amongst the grass there there's one alicia mahoney alicia mahoney thank you well thank you everyone and for everyone else look look you see how difficult you're making chris's life by not being a top tier patreon i mean i don't want you to feel bad about yourselves but you saw the the difficulties he was experiencing there you know you could do something about it up to you you don't have to

it's optional just edit them to 50 less painful but they are still going to be there there and you know i'll just say that dan lev 151 and eric quirk they don't need to worry about it because they are also galaxy free and can contribute a couple more in there right okay that's fine it's breaking the format but that's okay and they've got this to thank them as well you're sitting on one of the great scientific stories that I've ever heard. And you're so polite. And hey, wait a minute. Am I an expert? I kind of am. Yeah. I don't trust people at all. You certainly don't. And they don't trust you anymore scott adam so sorry you've been you've been cancelled my friend um but you know just as a as a final little treat chris for our listeners i'd like to do something as a surprise okay just to wrap no to express my appreciation for everybody i'm going to read out because it's

sitting right in front of me the the titles of the recommended James Lindsay videos on YouTube. These are the ones that are sitting in front of me. The Woke Rejection of the Reasonable. Yep. Introducing Counter Woke Craft. It's Counter Woke Craft. Wow. Antonio Gransky, Cultural Marxism, Wokeness, and Leninisminism 4.0 4.0 are we up to 4.0 there's been

three previous versions he's improved his his analysis amazing what radicalized you james lindsey i don't know yeah it was his joe rogan appearance there's a disappointing answer people being on twitter uh woke comma mal comma and the american cultural revolution there we go it's all happening all over again hegel wokeness and the dialectical faith of leftism jesus christ i know it's insane theoretical lensing totalitarianism and the progressive impulse ideological totalism in the woke cult bit of a theme there is getting he's running out of the ways to rearrange those adjectives that's gonna be i think you know full marks for. I mean, he's sticking with the plan, sticking with the agenda. Yeah, that's it.

So, well, let's consign him to the dust heap. And listen, the next guru we're going to cover, it'll be a woman. They'll have a Y chromosome because we haven't had a female guru in a while and we're trying to get a bit more um for this season so we haven't decided who it is yet we've had suggestions people want us to do oprah uh we're also putting it we're also putting our feelers to having some non-guru interesting intelligent guests of the female persuasion and we're just waiting for some positive answers there too well yeah but we don't even need to say it matt because it's so obvious

so obvious they're always there they're just the feelers all right always attempting to reach women yeah that's fine that's fine that's the way to say it yes Yes, that's normal. Yeah, so good job, Matt. Well done. Thank you, Travis. Good luck out there. Watch out for the Canadian Institutional Narrative and the Distributed Idea Suppressing Complex. You know the drill.

I know the drill. Goodbye. Good luck, everybody. Ciao. Thank you.