It Could Happen Here - The Escherian Stairwell

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

We are joined by filmmaker Michael Lacanilao to discuss disinformation and the RIT Escherian Stairwell: Building a Modern Myth project. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Podcast. Podcast.

Thank you. Thank you. That is... It's true. It's true, actually. This is It Could true It's true actually It could happen here A podcast You're listening to a podcast Oh that's broadly accurate

That is More or less the truth We have dragged Robert out of bed Before the crack of dawn At 11.42am And we're going gonna talk about actually something very fun i'm i've been wanting to talk about this for a long time because this is one of actually one of my favorite things okay um yeah yeah so i'm gonna i'm gonna tell a bit of a bit

of a little story regarding one of my all-time favorite events and topics. So back in like 2013, there was this cheesy little online university science show made by the Rochester Institute of Technology called Can You Imagine? The idea was to highlight some of the cool and weird things at the university, in part to promote the Imagine RIT Festival, which was like the school's annual innovation and creativity festival thing that they put on. So yeah, today I want to talk specifically about episode three of the web series, because the contents of which overlap with some of my artistic interests and just my love of illusions and paradox, and it'll kind of tie into some topics we other we always discuss in the show so yeah episode three one probably probably the most interesting episode um episode three opens with the hosts kevin and steph as they like stand awkwardly in a gloriously dated you like university film set like it's it's only 20 it's only 2013 but it was like obviously like made in the 90s like like like the sets like it's all it's all very dated what what specifically are you referring to oh like

they're like they're just like weird like like weird like like dated science stuff on the walls all the hosts are wearing like dorky orange t-shirts like over like over to over top of their regular clothes really old computers do they have like yeah yeah it's all it's all the kind it's all that kind of stuff so like dorky orange t-shirts with the letters r.i.t for raj kristar institute of technology um of course because everything in this online video series is perfect um kevin is wearing his shirt over top of like a down. It's great. The first 50 seconds of the video are taken up with plugging in the upcoming RIT Imagine Festival with a co-host, Steph, beautifully stumbling over her lines when she says the event's catchphrase.

It's where the left brain and the right brain collide. And it's great. It's where the left brain and the right brain collide. And it's great. It's perfect. So after all the plugs and the vamping, the hosts get down to the fun engineering feat that they'll be showing us today, which is a neat little architectural experiment, a part of the RIT campus called the Assyrian stairwell. Of course, named after the impossible staircases depicted in Dutch artist MC Escher's artwork. named after the impossible staircases depicted in Dutch artist MC Escher's artwork. So the video cuts from the little like soundstage they're filming in to this boring white seemingly typical stairwell. Our host Kevin ascending a flight of the gray concrete stairs explains that located

in building seven of the campus, the stairwell was designed by Filipino architect Rafael Nelson Avigando and was one of the first structures put up when RIT moved their campus from downtown Rochester to the more suburban Henrietta. When he's reaching the top of the stairs, he turns the corner and then suddenly seems to appear at the bottom of the lower flight of stairs leading up to the landing that he just left from, all while continuing to talk about the architect behind this like kind of weird impossible feat. So as Kevin walks back up to camera, he says that the stairwell was built in 1968 and it's been wowing RIT students ever since. It's, it is very cool. It's like, it's like,

you're like, okay, like you, you get, you get the little, like, like a, you get the little like architectural trick that they're doing. But it is still pretty fun to see. Before episode three of Can You Imagine aired, you can already find a few articles on the school's website about the Asherian stairwell, along with some forum posts debating how the architecture in the stairwell works to like achieve the effect um also floating around on youtube was like a random segment of what looked

like a like a pbs style late 90s documentary about the physics and architecture of the school and specifically the stairwell uh that interviewed some like professors um and some like architects and like of the and some physicists kind of discussing what, like, how to like bring paradox into the physical world. Yeah. But, but, but around the time that can you imagine episode aired the now like infamous RRT stairwell was mostly unknown. So it was like, even despite it being very interesting, no one really knew about it until this episode of this little web series

there. The little web episode dedicates around half its time to interviewing students and random people at the university about if they even know about the Star Wars existence. And if they do, what experiences they have with messing around with the looping architecture. Because yeah, you can play a lot of games

with this type of design. So the rest of the short video like tries to demonstrate the disorienting ascent down and descent back up uh via the camera in various ways like you know like human chains or holding hands around the weird like moobius loop type staircase and like passing objects back and forth in a circle while inside and around the enclosed stairwell. There's one where Kevin walks around with a cup to show that the stairs aren't like clearly like heavily slanted, like the water stays pretty level as he walks all the way through and we like we follow with him the entire time. So, yeah, like the overall like nerdy and lo-fi style of the university video matched with the insane feat of architectural illusion is a really fun mix.

It's very surreal, but not totally on purpose because it's just all of these regular college students showing this really cool architecture by this really good architect. And you're like, oh yeah, they're just so chill about it.

It is pretty fun. It's pretty fun. After the third episode of the Imagine RIT video was posted, finally, the mind-boggling looping staircase of Building 7 of RIT started to gain a lot of confused appreciation. And the Dorky University Science Show went viral. People started traveling from out of state even other countries to see the asherian stairwell themselves um and and film videos on

social media as as they walk through it there's this one video of like people traveling to like a different country and they're like harassing like the school staff to try to like tell them where it is and they're like oh my god you're still doing this it was like because like this film was this video was like like years old but it is. And they're like, Oh my God, you're still doing this. It was like, cause like this film was, this video was like years old, but it still happens. People still travel there to, to specifically see it. There is like tense online discussion and debate on how the Filipino architect Rafael Avogando was able to achieve the effect and what kind of

other bizarre architectural experiments he may have worked on. Because you can find his Facebook page and you can find some stuff about him but he has not really because like this this stairwell was built in the late 60s but you have you so even though he has an online presence he's like he's like he's not like active so it's unclear like what else he's actually been doing um but I would I would I would love to learn more about this architect and what else he's done because it is really rad to have these very small, condensed, but high-effort type builds. The existence of the whole thing poses some really interesting questions around how extremely clever paradoxical design can push the boundary of how we make assumptions about spatial physics and how we visually and physically demonstrate things that we usually can only depict in two dimensions right like you can you can easily depict the asherian stairwell in two dimensions but when you're scaling that up to three dimensions it's obviously more work like like that that is that is part of the paradox

um plus you know it also demonstrates the importance of art and how ideas once thought impossible or merely optical illusions can actually with enough data-gated effort break into our real reality. If a brilliant architect can manage to build this physically and like logically impossible structure, what other types of things can we actually do as possible? The video now has like over a million views on its original upload and videos about the RIT stairwell have raked up as many as like 25 million views. Wow. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Yeah.

You know what else demonstrates the looping nature of time? Having to listen to all these ads that we do. Pew! Pew pew. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. podcast or wherever you get your podcast. We are back. I've rounded the corner and we are back where we came from because of

the fun paradox of architecture. The one other thing I should mention before we continue on this episode is that the entire thing is fake. It's false. No way. Not this time. We created it. Not this time. No, not this time. It's totally made up. Because, of course, it's a staircase that breaks the basic rules of movement and physics. Kevin walks up the stairs and teleports to the lower stairwell believe them there's no that's not that's not an architectural illusion it's called good video editing and adobe after effects it's not like no you're you're really gonna believe a video on the internet

and some well-placed falsified internet posts over the very basic rules that govern our universe. But like, oh boy, did it fool millions of people. And if I played my cards right, I hope most of our listeners until the last few seconds. Yeah. So the whole thing was a student

like film and art project around building a modern myth. Because it sure is interesting how good like film and art project around, around building a modern myth. The, it's because it's sure, it sure is interesting how good storytelling can overrule obvious logical processes. The tale of the Asherian stairwell is one of my favorite case studies and how disinformation spreads and is believed while all in defiance of the basic rules

of reality, because it's not a matter of what facts are true. It's about what facts are compelling. And the idea of a logically impossible staircase being built by a brilliant Filipino architect is more interesting than it being someone's weird and disinformation art project. Fair. So yeah, I want to say,

what were you guys thinking as I was explaining the assuring and stairwell like what where'd you see this going okay so i had in the back of my head okay we should we should mention this uh garrison has been hyping up this episode for like i don't even a pretty significant amount of time has told us nothing so we just show up yeah and there's a staircase and i'm like what what and i was like my my brain my brain started going because he's in 1968 and i was like my like my counterinsurgency brain flicked on and i was like wait a second hold on is this like some kind of like uh weird like we've redesigned the college campuses

so they stop uh people stop taking the dean hostage a thing that used to happen constantly and would all my favorite part about this would happen constantly and you'd get new york times articles calling it non-violent great yeah so yeah it was a that was a i was yeah i spent more mental energy that i probably should have trying to figure out how it would work and i was like i don't know maybe they just made it like if they just made it occam's razor it's obviously yeah i mean i was i was in the like i was in the like okay so they built the staircase they built another the viewers cannot see my fingers and then it was like it's a regular staircase it doesn't tell us but you can

find videos of people traveling to the school to see if it's real and they try it and they're so disappointed they're like oh it's nope it's just stairs it doesn't it's disappointing in a lot of ways because it's not even like a thing where like there's like another back staircase that you walk down and then you go back up again

it's just nothing I was hoping there was like some actual clever thing as no no it's just it's not real it's it's it's just it was that meme it was that meme where all the math doesn't add up and the person what is happening i was like all right garrison you got us here you made robert get up like, what is happening? I was like, all right, Garrison, you got us here. You made Robert get up before noon. What is happening? Well, the real reason I got Robert up before noon is because I actually have scheduled an interview

with the creator of the Asherian stairwell, the actual one, via the online art project and building a modern myth idea, which we are now going to segue into. So, yeah, what follows is us talking with the creator of the Assyrian stairwell project. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories

inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

podcast or wherever you get your podcast hello uh we are we are back from our probably very very brief break um and with me uh along with robert and and chris and sophie is uh michael the creator of the Assyrian stairwell project and the building the modern myth project. Hello. Greetings. Hi. Greetings. Thank you so much for joining us to talk about one of my favorite things, actually, which is your little 2S13 project. Yeah, I've been a fan of this for a long time and found it to be really compelling and interesting um and i so i just walked through robert and and chris and sophie what what it what it was but from the perspective of it being true uh for like for the good 15

minutes i was i was i was going was going through talking about it as if it were completely real I'm curious to hear how you did that I'm not it was slightly baffling because again we were told nothing and then what we got is Garrison is talking about a YouTube video about an architecture thing and I was like what

what is happening here yeah and then talking about hey oh yeah and i guess one more thing is that it's actually fake um and it's part of this whole this whole thing so yeah i would i would love to talk to you about both like how how you like logistically like made the project but also like the underlying your underlying thoughts that like inspired you to do it in the first place. And then like retrospective now, almost like 10 years later, like how do you view the project as like happening,

you know, right before like the peak of online disinformation, um, around like 2016. Right. So, but first of all, I,

I think we should probably start, start at the beginning. Like what, what was your inspirations for this type of like, um, online, like very, cause it seems, it seems built to go viral in a lot of ways yes exactly so this was around 2011 i guess was when i first got the idea it was for my master's thesis my mFA for film at Rochester at RIT. And the idea actually began from this like deep anxiety about how to discern

fact from fiction. At the time, like I came into film school, like really into like realism in films like Romania, new wave, Mikhail Hanukkah,ke dardan brothers like these are filmmakers who are like they're sort of like the modern day version of italian neo-realism and they're trying to like depict like these um reality as it is i wanted to like learn how to

make those types of films um so over like with each year that's what i tried to get better at and the more i tried to do that um well like a number of things were happening around that time right in class they showed us these mockumentaries called no lies which was made in 1973 by this guy called mitchell black it actually won a student oscar at the time and uh delusions in modern primitivism 2001 by this guy named daniel laughlin um and these like i was like floored because i thought they were real like real documentaries and um and it bothered me like our teachers told us afterwards that these were actually scripted works of fiction with really, really good actors. And I went into kind of existential crisis mode afterwards.

How do I even discern what's true from what's not if I got fooled by these things? Especially, that's my concentration. That's what I've been studying for years. And even I was not even able to tell that they were fake right yeah there was that going on and then there was like smartphones were becoming a thing like i just looked it up smartphones didn't start out sell out selling flip phones till 2013 so around this time like it was becoming a thing where everyone would have the internet in their pocket so i guess there was that anxiety going on yeah i'm trying to think about um um how we're starting to function and how we're how i remember when i proposed my thesis to the thesis

committee i i um one of the things that i was telling them was, um, I have this worry about how reliant we are on the internet to determine what's true and what's not. And this is like, like my professors found my concerns, like really abstract and theoretical, like why do you even care? Because this was 2011, right? Like, why do you care about fact and fiction it wasn't like fake news that wasn't even a term yeah it wasn't it didn't become part of the everyday lexicon like you said until 2016 when trump started throwing that term around yeah and and suddenly

we hear about it every day um so there was that going on trayvon martin was a thing and for the first time like nationally you could see like disinformation like on you know just like exaggerated versions of different different accounts from like polarizing sides yeah all that was going on and so i i i wanted to it, it was like this film project was about trying to take something that was, are you familiar with the difference between a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge? Yeah. Okay, so for anyone who might be listening that doesn't really know the exact difference, for anyone who might be listening that doesn't really know the exact difference a priori knowledge is the type of knowledge that you can have without needing to make observations or conduct experiments or look at surveys or do any research of any any kind it's a sort of knowledge you can know just by

reasoning it out but just by sitting in a room by yourself in the dark you could figure things out this is the sort this is a priori knowledge um so for an example of that is like knowing that all bachelors are unmarried right or all triangles have three sides that's a priori knowledge an example of a posteriori knowledge um is something that you find out through observation or using one or more of your five senses, right? Like Joe Biden is the president of the United States. The masses of Mars is 6.417, one times 10 to the 23rd kilograms. You actually have to go out into the world and conduct surveys or do research. So that's a posterior knowledge. So the idea was to take something that was a priori false, something that could be disproven by reason alone.

You wouldn't need to do any research in order to know that it was false. You'd simply have to reflect on it and um think about it uh so we could have picked anything right we could have we could have said made up like a fake news report that leaves mathematicians at mit having invented like a square with five sides something like that you know um i remember their weekend update and so now had this sketch i think it was like um forget who it was it might have been kevin nealon or something like that the the report was like uh scientists and mathematicians have discovered a new number the number exists between five and six and they're calling it the number spleen you know

something like that which is like just impossible yeah so um so come up with something that could be disproven by reason alone and at the same time surround it with this wealth of online information yeah um supporting its veracity so like you know it was kind of a social experiment so i was like have we are we so far beyond rational thinking that even something that can be disproven a priori people would believe and it was like we didn't really know the answer to that but we were going to commit to creating this thing as though it was real and but which was like logically impossible so in a way it anticipated the age of like this information absolutely um and it was just yeah the thing i kind of alluded to in my little scripted portion is like yeah it wasn't just the youtube video there was also all this extra online

content that was created um some of which fake articles right yeah yeah yeah so like there was you could find like articles forum posts all this kind of stuff like like like if yeah like so if you could look into it more and find these other things but it still contradicts the basic logical processes that we can use to discern what is real what is not um in terms of like yeah in terms of like believing in a five-sided square like no that's not what that that's not how like physics and like spatial like spatial dimensions work um right so yeah and then in terms of all the extra material you filmed for it there was like there was like i think i read around like nine hours of documentary footage was also well it was a lot like a lot of footage but it was only made into like probably a 30 minute thing

um we got our friends like at the very very beginning we got our friends to play along with it like so whenever you see posts about this just comment like it's real like yeah i was there it was really great and um eventually people would actually start visiting the stairwell like from all over like from canada they'd cross the border to get there because it's in upstate New York. Right. And I actually ran into a couple from India who happened to be visiting New York. And they were like, since we're here, we'd like to see this stairwell,

that sort of thing. Oh no. I know. I felt really bad for a lot of the visitors. So we actually had to come up with souvenirs so that they wouldn't leave empty handed. Right. So we made fake, we made postcards, like saying I've been to the Asheron stairwell, stuff like that. That is lovely.

That is so good. And what happened, the way we explained it. So a lot of people were really mad, actually, you know, as you can imagine when they got there. as you can imagine when they got there. But after we would explain what we were doing to them with the project, like a lot of them actually like started playing along and thought it was really cool. And they went home with their souvenirs and told their friends that they just saw this amazing thing.

So, you know, it kind of built that way for a little bit. I mean, yeah. Cause it's like telling kids that Santa isn't real. Exactly. And then some of them will be like,

play along with like, okay, cool. This means I can play along with the myth to help keep other kids happy. And some of them will be like, what? Oh no. My entire reality is broken.

How can this happen? Right. And when you find out it's your turn to like pass it on. Exactly. That. So a lot of that was going on. Like Shaq, the basketball player posted about it at some point

joe rogan talked about it on his podcast oh my god they got kind of crazy wait wait did joe rogan know it wasn't real um it's funny you should see the clip of him doing it because he was like it was him and who's the other guy burt kreiser or something anyway they were arguing about whether or not it was real the other guy was like no it's something. Anyway, they were arguing about whether or not it was real. The other guy was like, no, it's real. It's so real. Joe Rogan was like, all you guys are fucking idiots. You're all idiots.

Let's Google it right now. They Google it and they look up an article and Joe Rogan's like, okay. Yeah. All right. It's still fucking stupid. The guy who built it is fucking stupid. You know. That is so good.

No. the guy who built it is fucking stupid you know that is so good yeah i you have you have no idea how happy you have made me because i in my in my research but like i i have like read your thesis i've read all the i remember lots of articles about this i did not come across the jorogin clip but i would have loved to see that right right um it's like way back right it's like 10 years ago and it's like a lot of stuff to dig through and i found it though again um so i'd like to kind of go into like the logistics of like actually doing this in terms of like creating all the fake like web content but also like you know dreaming up this like family-friendly science show that's made by rit and like how like you know the thing between like naturalism and realism and making it like playing not trying to like replicate reality but playing it as if it were

reality and how those are two different things um yeah we what we wanted to make it as real as possible and like that's what I was I'd been studying anyway, but in a dramatic context, like making narrative films. And the idea was to... There's this event at RIT every year, which gets a lot of people, like 30,000 people a year, to go to the campus and look at these... Whatever the students are working on. It's kind of like a mini festival type thing.

Well, not mini. It's pretty big. just we wanted to make a video for that event um as though we were promoting the event hey come see the asharian stairwell when you get here at rit um and you know you normally for these like for these for these events if you have a booth or something you'll see reservations and you'll see like four people reserved 15 people like we were like started getting nervous and we found out we got a sense that this was going to be big because like when i looked at like the reservations for like our non-existent stairwell there were like 1000 plus visitors waiting to visit it um yeah i still remember like going to campus that day of the festival saturday and like my friend ira like comes up to me he's like mike people want to kill you like come get over here i was like trying to not show my face but anyway yeah that's what so what the way like a lot of the legs of the project was just like word of mouth, I guess.

And we actually ran out of money. We didn't get to do like the web stuff on the scale that we wanted to. But it turned out that we didn't even have to. In fact, like within a few days or maybe a week or something after the original video came out, I posted a video explaining that it's a myth like i posted it and i was like all right that was a fun ride now it's gonna be over because here's a video of me explaining everything on the same youtube channel yeah right and people still didn't believe it people were saying that my my video explaining was fake that was a conspiracy like people were you know like there they're so invested inside the

inside the actual myth of it yeah because it is right it is so much for a lot of people they've thought that is more compelling than the idea that is this like you know project around what is real what's not they just got so invested in the reality of it that they'll explain away every other explanation right right um exactly like my i had a teacher at rutgers where i did my undergrad tim odlin he used to say that you know there's two types of thinking there's reasoning and there's rationalizing reasoning is when when you start from a place of ignorance and you um look at the best evidence and the best arguments you can find and follow that through to the rational conclusion. Rationalizing is when you start from what you want to believe and working backwards and looking for, you know, confirmation. Right, exactly.

Yeah. Right. Looking for the arguments that already support what you're saying there there was a lot of uh a lot of rationalizing going on i guess people wanted to believe it yeah for for the um how much how many people in this because i assume for all like the filming like everyone was all like in on it but yeah you know there's a whole bunch of great stuff around like all of like the men on the street segments are are like perfectly done in terms of like people like just acting like regular university students like talking about this stairwell and like how they've

got like lost and then they're like looping around in a circle um and all the segments with you with um like inside the stairwell with all like the very like the very clever editing i assume you're using stuff like adobe after effects um and yeah it's it is played it's played so well like it's it's i think part of the part of why it's so successful is that it's not filmed like you would film something too high like like like for a lot of films when they like you want to do like like you know like like a the term is like a one-er where they have like one long shot and then they like hide the transitions in between right you can obviously tell, like they're filming it to make these transitions work versus the way you film this is just how people would film it if they were filming this for real. Um, and you can definitely tell that and it's, it is so carefully

done because it's not trying to be something. It is is it is just being the thing so earnestly in terms of like how how the actors like stumble over their lines in the in like the opening segment um like the aesthetics of like all of like the title cards and everything is just so it has this it has this like aura of earnestness which i think helps sells the whole project so so much yeah yeah actually speaking of the show and like the cheesy title cards and stuff my girlfriend at the time was a producer for this show called this local show called homework hotline and where kids call in with their homework and they answer questions about it i studied the shit out of that show just looking at how they built the sets and how cheesy and how

awkward like the uh the hosts were because a lot of it was like a lot of the realism i think of it is just um yeah the awkwardness of the people how it's not um it's not really meant to be and and like like the best the most convincing untruths right is a combination of fact and fiction yeah and you know a lot of and blending in the actors with real people you know in in in the in the actual video stuff like that it's like yeah it comes out 2013 goes goes pretty viral um you like pretty quick create a very easy explanation for no it's not it's not real it's part of this project people still believe it for years and years um as kind of the decade progresses we go into like the era of disinformation everyone starts getting phones in

their pockets everyone has facebook with them wherever they go everyone has twitter with them wherever they go how is kind of your views on like the ethics of the project and what it demonstrates in terms of like a case study and like a social experiment like how has that changed over the years from like you like 10 years ago when you're dreaming this up to you now after you know we've had stuff like you know like january 6th and i'm two and on you know all these types of things which i feel like have almost like foreshadowed in this in this weird way by showing how successful your little project is. Yeah.

So a lot of the criticisms that it was faced from the get-go, like from RIT professors even, is still facing right now. Like it's still the type of thing people bring up, which is essentially that, hey, there's so much disinformation out there. At the time, we weren't even using those terms, disinformation, misinformation, right? But basically, people were bringing up the same complaints, which is there's so much disinformation out there. You're basically just adding to it. What are you even doing? So I guess the idea is that, and you know, it's a very noble idea, which is what's our response to disinformation, right? We should, I guess the idea is we should

call out every instance of it when we can flag posts, um, report posts that violate community, community standards, you know, speak out, um, provide counter evidence when you see fake news that sort of thing and i think that's great that's a good thing um but disinformation the problem with disinformation is at the time this is kind of how i explained it like 10 years ago i i described it as a pan as an epidemic yeah no absolutely right or or like a cockroach infestation like every time you kill one 10 more spring up and via this this notion of like we gotta call out every instance of disinformation and stomp it away is like it's great but you're focused on killing cockroaches yeah it's like addressing the symptoms not the actual problem right i want to get to the cockroach's nest right and whenever whenever i give talks about this um this project people

always approach me afterwards you know like wanting me to kind of because we we don't just talk about this project we talk about like deep fake stuff like we show speeches of obama like looking like the real obama but it's like completely fake. Right. And people start to realize, holy shit, like I don't even know what's real or not anymore. Like, what can I trust? And they approach me expecting me to ease their anxiety somehow and kind of like guide them through how to discern what's true from what's not. As though my project was about finding some sort of solution.

And I tell them that like my project wasn about finding some sort of solution. And I tell them that my project wasn't about solving the problem. It was about seeing the problem, right? It's about trying to get to the heart of the matter. And it's like, to me, I think the heart of the matter, like the cockroach's nest is the, I don't know, there are different ways to say it but basically the um the lack of critical thinking in individuals and like in the society we shape together or um or lack of a willingness to think through things carefully maybe that's that's um that's like if we had a

society of critical thinkers this wouldn't be much of a problem i think it's because so many people come at a lot of information from like what you would say the rational viewpoint of like they're trying to use reason and stuff like they're trying to think critically they're trying to think like logically but they come at it in the terms of rationalizing stuff they already believe um and i think that's a very prevailing type of idea in terms of like, yes, I'm going to believe in this thing. So I'm going to find evidence to support it. Which isn't critical thinking, I don't think.

Not really. No, that is itself a logical fallacy. But that is so common, especially on the internet, because the internet, it encourages the backfire effect. You know, whenever someone calls out on something, you want to be right. So you're going to, as soon as someone calls something, you're going to backfire effect. You know, whenever someone calls out on something, you want to be right. So you're going to, as soon as someone calls out on something, you're going to backfire. You're going to, like, become even more entrenched in what you believe. When you, you know, when you explain to someone that, no, Hillary Clinton is bad, but she doesn't eat the blood of children.

Like, no, she does. I saw it on this thing. I have to believe it because, like, all of the things are tied up in what makes you a person and now all of these like ideas that have that were used to be just be conspiracy theories that you could believe in for fun are now so a part of like what people's sense of being are and how they have their entire world view that there's so much more because the internet is such a bigger part of their lives everything on the internet is a bigger part of the lives for each person. So it is more of an ontological threat because these things are so closer together now.

There used to be much more of a distinction between the internet and you because you could only access the computer every once in a while. We can now carry around a supercomputer wherever we go. So it is like a part of you. You bring it with you almost everywhere. It's always in your pocket. so these things are so like stitched together that prying them apart and telling people no this thing you carry around actually probably most what you see on it isn't isn't actually true like there is people can like believe that in their heads but don't actually don't actually the belief doesn't actually impact them because like we all know that there's like

we all know that people can just go on the internet and lie right it is like a part of the joke but we still don't act like it like oftentimes we get so we get so like encased into the stories that we tell ourselves right the part of why the asherian stairwell is so good is that it's such a it's such a compelling story like that like the idea of like a brilliant architect bringing like you know building this paradox in the real world is like is is so much more fun than being like yeah some dude just knows how to use adobe after effects like right so you get so entrenched in the storytelling because the the story of like politicians eating the eating the blood of children is so much more interesting than no politicians just don't care about you like and getting to the heart of that problem is so much more interesting than no politicians just don't care about you. Like,

and getting to the heart of that problem is so much more difficult than just, you know, debunking things because you can debunk things all day. And does that actually matter? Yeah. And I think that there's, there's a secondary problem that like, you know, there's another,

like a level of it, which is that, yeah, like everyone knows that there's this information now, like everyone does, but, but that just makes it worse because now if you want to do this information what you can claim is like oh hey look at all these other times that uh all the stuff has been fake and then you know this is how you get everyone like doing frame by frame analyses of like a bombing and going oh

these are all crisis actors and it's like you know and you talk to these people and they're like oh yeah no i i i i did i did the research look i like i saw through the lies it's like no you've just completely made this thing up in your head but you can see the green screen compression they're like no it's just regular video compression and it's like yeah like everyone can be a detective now so everyone can be so convinced of their own conclusions even when the conclusions turn out to be not true right it's a problem if there was an easy solution we wouldn't have the problem even when the conclusions turn out to be not true. Right. It's a problem.

If there was an easy solution, we wouldn't have the problem, right? It's one of those things where it's like, your project's a very good example of like, it's a very demonstrative thing. You take someone along this journey and demonstrate, hey, this can happen to you, so you should watch out for it, right? Look at the story I crafted.

Look how you become convinced of it for these six minutes and then you think oh wait no you can't teleport to a bottom stairwell that's not that's not how that works um but because you take them on that journey it's a very it's a i love it so much as like a demonstrative process being like so like this can happen so watch out for it in the future i Which I think is honestly more useful than just debunking somebody. Because you can debunk all day. You can have the backfire effect and stuff. Yeah, and you're right about the demonstrative stuff. Because it's like, if a bunch of film students and volunteers with no connections and no resources pulled this off.

connections and no resources pulled this off like we did like a tally of all the videos at the end of the year of um you know all the videos that ripped it off and posted on their own channels and all that um it was like 50 million right so if a bunch of film students like had that much influence what more can like people who are actually fun like actual political power yeah and resources right what could they do and we were just doing ours was about like this innocuous silly stairwell it wasn't about anything that would cause you know anyone's death or anything like that or and like you know something like in myanmar Myanmar, where the Myanmar military basically systemically, systematically created fake articles and fake photos to create, like, to arouse disdain for the Rohingya people. And they incited a genocide through Facebook, just through fake news. a genocide through facebook just through fake news right in the philippines where i live right now um which uh a lot of commentators call like the patient zero of disinformation because in 2016

this guy called duterte uh was elected president basically ran it running his entire campaign on disinformation and after him was brexit like a month later and after that was trump got the nomination so like what's her name kate katie barth barth or something like that uh the one of the executives of facebook referred to the philippines as patient zero in the era of disinformation because like um and the thing that duterte the president here right now was running on was basically like the same sort of um othering and scapegoating of a certain group and he said basically he's the guy who said like basically if you're a drug user or a drug dealer it should be okay to murder you and kill you and that's what happened that's exactly

what happened because they were posting all these stories about um you know the same sorts of stories that you that that we saw in the u.s in 2016 about undocumented immigrants or muslims or something like that this like oh this undocumented immigrant raped a five-year-old girl you know that sort of thing yeah and he would the the the um the organized campaign um making up stories about drug addicts like murdering and raping people basically like got an entire nation to well not an entire nation, but basically this guy won the election. And, you know, we have a country right now that basically lived through just atrocities the last five, six years, you know? And like the double-edged sword of this, like what Chris mentioned is like,

yeah, this type, same type of thing, because it exists, people also like retroactively apply it to like, you know, like Sandy Hook was staged or like even stuff now with like, you know, the pandemic, right. People would be like, what if, what does that, but what does the pandemic isn't real? What if all these people have just, you know, conjured this thing into being, and it's all a giant misinterpretation campaign, right. So it has this dual, it has this double edged sword nature,

which makes combat and disinformation so challenging since like disinformation to combat separation to comment the idea of disinformation and there's so many layers of it now there's this there's it's just yeah it makes it makes actually getting to the heart of it so much more challenging because it's been abstracted so many times yeah like one of the things i was remembering what didn't didn't the new york times weren't the first people to come up with the term fake news and then trump started using it after like or maybe was watching the post i forget which newspaper was but my memory of it was like it was it was it was the media that came up with fake news and then

like trump just took it and it became this like this just like demon they absolutely could not control and was just turned on them do you do you remember the context in which they used it for the first time like they were i think they were calling like stuff that trump said fake news um let me i am i'm unsure of at the moment who specifically coined that term but i mean we definitely see terms like even in terms like disinformation which used to be more tied to like a discordian philosophy definitely see terms like even in terms like disinformation which used to be more tied to like a discordian philosophy breaking like in like even even back even as back far as like the 80s getting you know turned into an actual like political term that everybody uses

so i'm reading that it was actually somebody from buzzfeed an editor at buzzfeed was one of the that makes sense frank silverman is one of the ones who first popularized it uh but was in 2016 yeah but there could be there could be you know several other people that say that they coined it i don't know i mean i even there's even a a a an illustration from 1894 by by freder Frederick offer with reporters carrying newspapers labeled humble news, a cheap sensation and fake news. So it's, I mean, in terms of,

in terms of just mashing words together, I'm sure it has, it's had a decent history, but definitely Trump is the one that like launched it into the zeitgeist. Right, right, right. Yeah.

Let's see. Uh, Robert, you've been pretty pretty quiet i know it's pretty early in the morning for you do you have any do you have any kind of thoughts to help us kind of generally start closing us out not like super immediately but generally head in that direction i mean no not really kind of brought up everything i would say all right. It's, uh, yeah. Um, I guess, uh, uh, Mike, what have, how has this project kind of impacted how you approach film and just the, like, how you, how you use the internet yourself in the past decade? Well, I'm fully aware of what we did. Every time I'm looking at something, I'm like, could they have done that? Could they have done this and that?

You know, that sort of thing. I don't know if it's... Yeah, I'm not sure how this project specifically. Impacted me. Other than. Just trying to think through. Things a bit more carefully. Trying to go through things. Like. I mean like. We basically.

Came up with this idea of. What eventually became troll farms. Like me and my classmates. Would. Even make fake accounts. And talk about the stairwell and um so i don't know like a few years later people we we learned that people were actually doing this like to influence like elections around the world and a lot of the strategy of like the russian troll farms and stuff um was to basically create caricature versions right of arguments from whatever side like you know whether they they might present an argument from like the left or the right but in like a

caricaturized version of it and um so what people would see when they see that they'd see an argument coming from the other side and they'd ridicule it like look at these people who just seem crazy espousing this whatever view you know or they might say things like um like yeah if you're a democrat you want to abort babies at like the ninth month or something like that. No reasonable person actually argued. So what happens is like people talk about how the goal of Russia was to like polarize, you know, polarize the political spectrum. I think like the bigger goal and the goal that we're going to be untangling for many many years and the the more um the more difficult problem to deal with was that they oversimple they they successfully

oversimplified discourse you know what i'm saying like they found a way to like oversimplify the type of discourse we're having because everyone's like arguing with such simplistic, I'm not sure if I'm making sense. It's like, it's like, it's like the, the, the term I use is like politics as fandom.

Right, right, right. And that's, I think that like intersect, it's not exactly what you're saying, but like it intersects with that type of idea of likeensing down actual discussions on what you believe in and what politics you want and how you want to improve the world into this weird fandom lens of this team versus this team. We've had a degree of that for a long, long time.

But with the internet and how discussions on the internet are designed to work, right. How algorithms want to boost content, how there's always these short snippets. It just, it mirrors the way people discuss like what star Wars character is their favorite. It's just that, but for politics. So it's,

it's just this, like, what if politics is just this idea of fandom and you can debate what fandom is more valid than the other, right. I like the last Jedi more. You like rise of Skywalker. This means your version of reality is more valid than the other right i like the last jedi more you like rise of skywalker this means your version of reality is less good than mine so that is that

is objectively true if you like the rise of skywalker which is true right is wrong but it's that same idea but for how we like make social programs and how we address racism and how we like give food to poor people and how we do affordable housing and how we handle the police. So it's that type of idea, which is just. Disinformation kind of impacts this in part, because when you flood the zone with so much conflicting information that people can't really get a handle on or easily sort of like when you've put that much confusion into the air, it makes people more likely to just kind of grasp

at sides because everything coming out is way too complicated and messy and it takes too much work to figure out what's actually true. So holding to some rubric of, well, I believe this. So that means these are the good guys. These are the bad guys. And I don't have to, to analyze it any deeper than that. I can reject information that comes from this group, or I can reject information that says this, um, because I, I just category categorically reject, you know, anything that, that fits in with that. Like that's the benefit of disinformation for authoritarians of all stripes you're seeing it in ukraine right now where um you've got all of these different authoritarian powers you've got turkey you've got russia you've got um you know

fucking the the united states at least to the extent that like we impact a lot of things internationally um and you've got them all coming down on different sides of this issue and of what's happening in Ukraine. And because there's so much disinformation and misinformation about what's going on, people just kind of grasp at, well, whatever side I'm, have been more sympathetic to recently, I'm just going to believe whatever they say, because it's way too complicated to actually analyze what's going on. nuance nuance is liberalism i don't like nuance of liberalism don't don't research this don't think about this because nuance is how liberals like you know spread sort of pro regime change propaganda like i remember those people like amber frost just just straight up said this

and this was a huge and you know like i i got a lot of shit for this because you know like i i remember when when the coup in bolivia happened like i i made a giant thread that was trying that was like okay we need to figure out like how specifically the cia was involved in this like okay so did they plan the whole thing was it like were they working with local partners was it a thing where someone else planned it and they signed off on it and like to this day people think that i supported the coup because i was like we should figure out who was who the actors were on the ground because no one like this this this became like an act like like a like a tenant like an actual sort of like political tenets of of how a lot of anti-imperialism like in the

american left worked was you you were not supposed to do nuance you were not supposed to look at who was like you know if if you spent too long looking at what was going on in the ground people would be like you you work for the cia and that you know i think like we've we've finally seen that basically blow up in their faces because you know oh hey look how many of these people just like wound up supporting russia and then spent like three months saying that russia would never invade ukraine then this happens but it's i don't know it's it's it's it's extremely depressing how people who otherwise are, you know, like in, in, in a lot of ways,

like I've spent a lot of their time, like trying to, you know, filter out stuff from the media. That's false. Just go into this because they just do not want to deal with the complexity of reality. Yeah.

It's just easier not to, again, if there was a simple problem, we wouldn't, I mean, if there was a simple simple solution we wouldn't need to discuss the problem yeah yeah so i guess basically like just to like um answer that question about how it i guess at the time i'd say like we got an up-close look at how things were gonna be like you know, with all these things, we, we, it kind of anticipated the next few years. So yeah, that's basically what happened. Sorry to interrupt your closing, but no, no, no.

It's the best note that we can go. Mike, do you, where can people find you online and if people want to look into some of your other projects i mean you found me like i guess if they want to find me they'll find me right i don't know i still don't know how you got my email garrison is extremely good about this not that many people are that good uh yeah well they could check out the youtube channel like i'm gonna be posting some new films this year probably um so my name michael lock and allow uh or just search the asharians

there well i guess that's a way yeah yeah i'll i'll add your uh youtube channel to to the description yeah and i just want to thank you so much for coming on to talk about your project. Yeah, thanks for having me. All right, well, that does it for us today. You can follow us on the internets for some reason. On Twitter and Instagram at HappenHerePod and CoolSideMedia. And yeah, go create a myth that people will believe and travel from out of country to walk over some stairs because that sounds like fun.

Go do something like that for fun. Funsies. All right. Bye bye. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright.

An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.