QAA Podcast - Premium Episode 225: Witch Tok (Sample)

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

There is a world that blends ancient arcane arts and algorithm-powered short form video content. That world is "Witch Tok," the community of self-described witches and other supposed wielders of magic who discuss the secrets of their craft on Tik Tok. Liv dives into Witch Tok to reveal how 21st century witches are leveraging social media to swap spells, hawk merch, and engage in occasional infighting. We also discover how christian media is reacting the popularity of online witches and continuing the centuries-old feud between protestants and those they accuse of being occultist devil worshippers. Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like 'Manclan', 'Trickle Down', and The Spectral Voyager: http://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz. http://qanonanonymous.com

What's up QAA listeners? The fun games have begun. I found a way to connect to the internet. I'm sorry, boy. Welcome listener to Premium Chapter 225 of the Q&ONANANANANANANANAS podcast, the Witch Talk episode. As always, we are your host, Jake Rakitansky, Liv Acar, and Travis View.

Magical Spells, Arcade, Car, filled with obscure mystical ingredients, broomsticks imbued with special powers, caldrons filled with murky substances made for nefarious purpose. These things are all stereotypical images related to witchcraft they were all surely familiar with, through their presentation and things like books, television, and movies. But what if I were to tell you that it was all real? Well, at least according to some people, and by people, I don't just mean 17th century New Englanders paranoid about devil worship in their colony. It turns out there was a surprise

A surprisingly large community of people on TikTok who believe they possess many of the same magical abilities that witches have as seen in popular culture. This subgroup that calls itself Witch Talk has accrued more than 46 billion video views of witchie-related content on the online video sharing site, filled with expert and novice spellcasters alike, who share the skills and expertise required to, according to, cast magical spells using a variety of obscure ingredients. Now, this is very interesting to me. I wonder if there's something about the short-form video social media platform that lends itself more to the arcane arts more so than, say, YouTube or Twitter. Exactly.

Yeah, I definitely feel like spells work better on a medium that's, you know, 30 seconds to a minute long. Yeah, you don't want to think about it for too long. It's like, here's the little bit of how to do it and what it does, and that's about it. Yeah, they cut like right as the tip of the wand is sort of lighting up. Not enough time for you to think about it for too long. Because on YouTube, if you do that, it's a little suspicious. You know, you want to get to the 10-minute mark for ads. But Witch Talk has its own own monetary motivations we'll get into later.

But if you're casting spells for 10 minutes, that gives you enough time to think, am I wasting my time right now? Yeah, that's enough time for the Ministry of Magic to step in and, you know, take away your wand, discipline you. You really don't want any of that happening. Today's episode will be all about this dedicated and surprisingly large community of self-proclaimed witches, what they believe, why they believe it, the history of self-proclaimed witchcraft, and how those outside of the community have reacted to this group's confidence surrounding their supposed spellcasting abilities.

Now, I started my journey onto Witch Talk. In a similar way, I started my TikTok spiritualist rabbit hole episode from Eirisargo, which basically entails making a new TikTok account, finding a couple videos from the target community, playing them on loop a bunch of times, and then only viewing video suggested to my 4U page related to this community. If you aren't aware, TikTok is a video-based social media site that runs almost entirely through the use of a suggestion algorithm, through the 4U page, or FYP for short. It takes note of this sort of stuff you view and gives you content that other people that also view it tend to like. So you start viewing witchy stuff, it's like, okay, here's only witchy stuff. You can scroll on for hours and hours and hours. different types of spells and cauldrons and potions and all that.

And this journey felt a whole lot like my deep dive into New Age spiritualism TikTok, as there's a great deal of crossover within these two communities. Some of the creators my feed gave me were actually people I recognized from that deep dive, whose faces have now seemingly been etched into my brain permanently. These are people who think that vibes and vibe-based practices have a real effect on the world, that there's some underlying spiritualist structure to the universe that they can tap into to manipulate. While in the New Age community, there's more of an emphasis on, for instance, manifesting things in your head. For those on Witch Talk, there are very specific magical procedures required to unleash one's mental vibes-based energies in the proper manner.

So it's a lot more kind of structured, you know, leviosa, not leviosa sort of stuff. Mm-hmm. Sure. Here's an example of the text from a TikTok detailing a user's journey from New Age spiritualism into witchcraft. The video reads, How my spiritual journey accidentally turned into witchcraft. Meditation starts collecting crystals and learning about them, becoming obsessed with incense and how to cleanse, learning how to read tarot cards,

doing shadow work and writing manifestations in a normal journal to a leather journal. Wait a minute, wait a minute. So there's a significance in the materials that make up the binding of one's journal? Yeah, it's a lot about like how it makes you feel, But there's kind of an implication and sometimes explicitly that, like, how it makes you feel is, like, structured and also relate to the vibes of the universe. So, like, this thing tends to make people feel this way. And as a result, they can do extra magical powers in this sort of way. So have you started getting, like, targeted ads for, like, the necronomicon and, you know, journals that, you know, have faces carved into them? That would be, I wish it was, like, it went kind of the evil dead angle. I think that they should be more explicit. it like dark magic spellcraft i think that's much cooler you know it's fucked up like i don't even

look at this witch talk stuff and i'm already getting ads for like this wand that you can put a little piece of snap paper into and it shoots fireballs out of it i mean and that's for somebody who you know who hasn't even really folded witch talk into their algorithm is this like real tech like it lights it on fire or something yeah it's like i imagine that it's kind of the same technology is, you remember those little boxes that you would get around 4th of July that are those little kind of twisted up white pieces of paper and you throw them on the ground and they pop and snap. I feel like it's the sort of the same science behind it, except you're shooting it out of a wand somehow. It's like a combination between that and a rubber band gun. Honestly, that sounds

more real than the witch stuff. Like, at least it's like a fire thing with that. Like, that's cool. Oh, yeah. Oh, it looks cool. It looks cool. No, a lot of the witch spells are more vibes face. You can change how people perceive you and how people feel about you, how you feel about situations, this sort of thing. There's no, like, I cast magic missile on you. So there's no, there's no, like, AI voice being like, watch as I turn my boyfriend into a frog. How to saw someone in half and still have their legs move. Well, it sounds a lot like just like practical psychology, how to affect your own mood and sense of and how to influence others, I mean, that's, that's not just magic.

That's just sort of like a kind of like a life skill to navigate the social systems. Yeah, and you can see, like, with what this lady was saying about, like, doing shadow work, writing manifestation, it's in your journal. It's like journaling stuff can actually have a positive effect on your kind of emotional investment in the world, the self-awareness of what's going on. It's just that, like, for a lot of people, they have to couch that in, like, magical language. Like, the shadow self stuff is just, like, confronting kind of your fears and anxieties. and working through them, but for them, it's like, there is this version of you that's, like,

in a darker realm that's all of the negative version, and you're, like, actually telepathically communicating with them, essentially, and reconciling with, like, a real spiritual entity. You see, like, it is, like, a normal kind of healthy psychological, you know, clinical psychological practice, but just, like, made into this language that makes it seem more powerful. All right. And in the video, it shows that when she changes to the special journal, it's kind of this edgy leather-bound journal with a pentagram. in the middle, which of course is like, you know, a Satanism thing, but it's also the five different

elements of matter within like modern neo-pagan Wiccan stuff, which we'll also get into later because that's rather important. But the TikTok continues. Swapping regular candles for spell candles, being drawn to books about witchcraft, learning about herbs and their properties, using herbs for protection, making an altar and casting spells. Well, now this is a jump, you know, Swapping the regular candles for the, for spell candles, okay, no problem. And you draw into books, that makes sense, and learning about herbs and, you know, the properties. And then, like, making an altar and casting spells. It just feels, like, sort of an escalation from the other listed sort of things.

Yeah, really off the deep end when you hear it for it like this. You have been listening to a sample of a premium episode of QAnon Anonymous. We don't run any advertising on the show, and we'd like to. to keep it that way. For five bucks a month, you'll get access to this episode, a new one each week, and our entire library of premium episodes. So head on over to patreon.com slash QAnonanonymous and subscribe. Thank you.

Thanks. I love you. Jake loves you. Thank you.