Reply All - #122 The QAnon Code ⚡️⚡️

Episode Date: June 7, 2018

This week, to celebrate Alex Goldman’s return from paternity leave, a Yes Yes No extravaganza. Alex takes PJ and Alex Blumberg through the internet’s most encompassing conspiracy theory to date, and then Gene Demby joins us to help unpack a very different kind of conspiracy. Paris Martineau's Qanon explainer in New York Magazine Paris Martineau's Reporting on Roseanne and QAnon for The Outline Ben Detrick on Bryan Colangelo The Yes Yes No Blog Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Gimlet, this is Reply Off. I'm PJ Vote. And I'm Alex Goldman. Welcome once again to yes, yes, no, the segment on the show where our boss, Alex Bloomberg, comes to me and PJ with a tweet that he doesn't understand. And we try to explain it to him. Alex Bloomberg, do you have a tweet for us today? Actually, Bloomberg, I have a tweet for you guys today. Whoa.

Okay. Let me set this up a little bit before I even, like, get to the thing I don't understand, okay? All right. Yeah. So it's Thursday today. It's May 31st. yesterday, two days ago, two days ago, okay, three days ago, Rosam Barr had a very successful sitcom on ABC. The most successful sitcom on ABC and on network television, I believe.

That seems completely possible. Yeah. And then what happened is that she tweeted this straightforwardly racist tweet about, of all people, Valerie Jarrett, who used to work in the Obama administration. Roseanne said, quote, Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Eighth. had a baby equals VJ for Valerie Jarrett. And then this surprising thing actually happened, which is that there was a consequence to someone saying something racist,

which is that Roseanne's show got canceled. Right. And so I was looking at Roseanne's Twitter feed after it happened. And what was interesting was that she was sort of like, on her main, like, where she posts her tweets, she was saying like, oh, I'm very sorry if you were offended, blah, blah, blah,

kind of like millie-mouthed non-apology apologies. But then if you went to her favorites column, like the things that she likes on Twitter, the things she was liking were completely bonkers. Oh. So basically, like, all these tweets that she was liking were all about this one conspiracy theory, which I have seen on the internet for the past year

and just, like, just decided to sit this one out. Like, I did not want to understand it. But apparently, like, Roseanne has found it. Roseanne believes in it. and it seemed like part of the reason she made this racist tweet that she just, like, destroyed her career for, that it came out of her belief in this thing. So this is what I now want to understand.

I want to understand this conspiracy theory that I have up until this point tried to keep out of my brain. And I think it could be in somebody's brain in this room. And I was like, okay, this is the point. Me? So, like, I noticed that all the tweets that she liked are on the same hashtag. They're all on QAnon,

which I know is a conspiracy theory. and that's about everything I know about it. And the tweet that I'm bringing you, it's also on the Q&N hashtag, and I picked this one because it was immensely popular and I don't understand like a single word of it. So let me show it to you. Yes, send it to me.

So, well, just show it to you. Show it to me. And before I show you this tweet... By the way, you're just talking to Alex Goldman right now, and I'm feeling a little left out. There's a possible... You don't know what I do on the Internet late at night. Perhaps I am also researching Internet conspiracy theories.

I'm sorry for treating this segment as if it's called yes now. If you, if you know, if you can decipher this tweet, no, no. I will boil one of my shoes and eat it. I haven't seen it. Say it unseen. I'm going to go ahead and say,

I will eat my shoe. Okay. Okay, so, so the first thing you know before I tell you anything about this tweet is that it's really, it has 624 retweets and 677 likes. Like, this was a popular tweet that. in theory made sense to at least that many people. Okay. It's from a user named Anonymous Info,

bomb emoji, lightning emoji, fire emoji, fire emoji, lightning emoji, fire emoji, lightning emoji, fire emoji. There's a dot, dot, dot, which I think means, yes, there's many more emojis that are all the same ones. Okay. Their avatar is the silhouette of a person in front of the flames, actual flames

in the shape of a phoenix. And what they have to say is lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt. Wow! Lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt. Hashtag QAnon. See, Roseanne was great about Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS. Lightning Bolt, hashtag Q post 44, lightning bolt, bomb emoji. Then, like, eight people are added.

Then hashtag Q post 44. Who are the Muslim Brotherhood? Who is A1? Who is Huma? Who is Vijay? Who created ISIS? Who controlled ISIS? What was the purpose of ISIS?

This is one log hashtag or a bunch of different hashtags? The hashtag QPost 44 is like the title. And then the post, I guess, is a series of, I didn't know you could fit this much in a tweet. I know. I think they've screen grabbed an image to make this happen. Got it. What was the purpose of ISIS? Hashtag Q Post 573.

Seems fitting that a comment about Jared got the real Roseanne kicked off the Airbnb communist and all. And then there are six photos. One is. Oh, no, God, there's more. Okay, sorry. Then there's a photo of even from a message board of more questions. Hussein HRC and many more must be terrified. Amaddinajad talking.

Where did all the money go? How many planes? Where did planes land? Why were clowns private contractors escorting? Why cash? Why offshore cash? Why wasn't Congress notified for approval? Where did bank wires originate from?

coincidence all donations Why were clowns? I'm just going to say, do I have to read all the questions? I have to read all the questions. I don't think you do. No, but it's so funny. Why were clowns? Why were clowns?

Escorting. Where do majority of Rothschilds reside? Oh my God. It's also like they're very, it's all like scary conspiracy. And then there's like, why wasn't Congress? notified, which is like literally everybody says that about everything. Like, it's the most boring complaint. You know, there's like 17 foreign policy journals that contain that sentence. But usually they don't come after like why we're clowns. Yes, exactly. Also, there's just like,

there's more stuff flow. There's like pictures of Valerie Jarrett. There's pictures of Obama. Just like all this sort of like ingredients of a political conspiracy theory. So with that in mind, Alex Bloomberg, do you understand this tweet? No. Sike, I don't understand it. Alex Goldman, do you understand this tweet? Our last hope. I've actually been following this story for months, so yes, I get it. Okay.

Do you understand this tweet, PJ? No, no, I don't. All right. No, no. Yes, no, no. Okay, so Q&N is very big and very complex, and I'm super stoked to explain it to you guys, but I think we should probably do the break first

because I have a lot to get to. Coming up after the break, bunker, apple, yellow, sky. Welcome back to the show. Well, gentlemen, the QAnon story starts on a dark and stormy night. Really? No, it doesn't start on a dark and stormy night. Q&ON is an entity or entities that have created a grand conspiratorial cosmology on the internet.

Q-Anon are the people behind the conspiracy theory? Yes. Okay. So to start at the beginning, you guys are very familiar with Fortune. Fortune has a sub-board called Paul, P-O-L, which is their politics board. And 4-CAN? Fortune is a message board on the Internet where people are casually racist and basically try and be as extremely offensive as possible. So last October.

someone started posting on the poll board. Initially, not giving any information about themselves, just posting these sort of bizarre polemics that were mostly comprised of rhetorical questions. Not rhetorical questions, but they would just post a list of questions. And so this is one of their first posts. It goes like this.

Mockingbird. H.R.C., Hillary Radham Clinton, detained, not arrested yet. Where is Huma? Follow Huma. This has nothing to do with Russia yet. Why does POTUS surround himself with generals? What is military intelligence? Why go around the three-letter agencies? It goes on and on like this. Okay, and they're all sort of questions that have like a paranoid whiff to them or something. Right. So this person who's posting this gets the nickname Q. from the board because they claim to have what is called Q clearance,

which is like very, very high top secret clearance within the government. And is Q clearance a real thing? Q clearance is a real thing. Okay. So this person says that they have Q clearance until people start nicknaming them Q. People start calling them Q, Q, Q, Anon, because they're anonymous. And Q because of the clearance. Okay.

So over the course of the next couple days, this person posts dozens of times, something like 60 times in the next three or four days. Okay. And the 4chan community starts to build like a theory of the world based on these posts. It's basically like a supercharged version of Pizza Gate. And this is the foundational idea behind this theory. Like once you believe this, everything else makes perfect sense. Okay.

The Mueller investigation. Yes. Is not investigating Donald Trump. Hmm. It is working with Trump. To investigate. The Mueller investigation is a great big, smoke screen to try and misdirect people from the actual investigation.

The public face of it is a big smokescreen. Trump is a brilliant four-dimensional chess player that is playing the long game, pretending to be in love with Putin and Russia. And the whole investigation is actually directed toward the Clintons, the Obama's, Uh-huh. Humma Abidine. Uh-huh. And essentially, what it's investigating is a continuation of the Pizza Gate conspiracy.

Those people are globalists who sell themselves the highest bidder. They also run a child sex and torture ring. They're in collusion with basically every person who has been part of a right-wing conspiracy of the last 10 years. The Ross Childs, George Soros, John McCain is involved. all of these people are engaged in this nefarious activity, and the Mueller investigation is actually investigating them. They will be indicted. Got it.

And is the point of it a child sex and torture trafficking ring, or is that just like one of their concerns? Yeah, that's just like one of their, one of the many terrible things that they do. And so Q says the Trump administration is, onto these bad guys and is prosecuting them. So, like, for example, this is one of Q's first posts.

It says, my fellow Americans, over the course of the next several days, you will undoubtedly realize we are taking back our great country, the land of the free, from the evil tyrants that wish to do us harm, and destroy the last remaining refuge of shining light. On POTUS's order, we have initiated certain fail safes that

shall safeguard the public from the primary fallout, which is stated to secure, excuse me, which is slated to occur on November 3rd upon the arrest of Mr. Podesta, John Podesta. Okay, wait, when is this? This post is from November 1st of last year. Okay.

So this person is now saying that they're acting on behalf of President Trump. They're saying that President Trump is going to arrest John Podesta. There are going to be riots in the street. The military will temporarily take control of the government. And all of the bad actors in the world are going to be arrested. Starting with John Podesta. Starting with John Podesta. John Podesta is in this worldview, the worst person in the world?

So in the real world, John Podesta is kind of a minor political operative who has a relationship with the Clintons. But in conspiracy world, he is the center of Pizza Gate. And what? Is there like a name for this cabal? No. There's not a name for the people that they think are committing all of these conspiratorial atrocities. But there is a name for the good guys who are. going to indict everybody and send them all to jail. What's that name?

They called themselves the storm. The storm. And there's a reason for that. Which is. Last fall, Donald Trump was at a photo op with a bunch of military generals and made a very, very bizarre statement that he's never explained. Hold on. Let me find this video. Okay.

So it's literally just a photo op in the White House with a bunch of people. generals, et cetera, et cetera. And they're not... Okay. He's, like, smiling. Everyone's wearing nice cocktail clothes in, like, military general outfits. And it's, like, generals and their families.

It's the room where they take Christmas card pictures with the president. Right. Do you guys know what this represents? Tell us, sir. Maybe it's the calm before the storm. What's the storm could be? A calm before the storm.

What's the storm? We have the world. Great military people in this room. I will tell you that. And we'll have great evening. Thank you all for coming. What storm is the president? You'll find out.

Give us a hint to your rights. Thank you, everybody. So, that is such a, it's weird for the president, surrounded by all of his generals to just kind of like imply that a great storm is coming? Yeah. It's a very ambiguous thing to say about a very, about a thing that people do not want ambiguity around. And if you are conspiratorially minded, you are naturally going to latch on to that statement. Right. So Q calls his post crumbs.

Like he'll say, I'm just going to drop a few crumbs. And since crumbs come from bread, Q fans start calling themselves bakers. And the bakers are just convinced that Q is a genius. And Q gets like a big shot of credibility early on when they post something containing the word small. And then Trump's next tweet also contains the word small. But that's because it turned out to be Small Business Saturday. So that happened. And Q says that all these bad guys have already been indicted by the Trump administration.

And the reason that they can walk around free in the world is because the indictments are sealed and the government is keeping. track of them by putting ankle monitors on them. Okay. So the bakers will take, like, pictures of the Obamas and the Clintons and, like, do close-ups on their legs and be like, is Huma Abidine wearing an ankle monitor? And in this photograph, Huma is wearing bell bottoms. Oh, over, like, what looked like to be chunky shoes or a secret ankle monitor because she's been arrested.

Oh, wow. There are photos of Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, walking around. wearing loose fitting pants and that's obviously because. So anybody that doesn't wear hipster jeans is now under suspicion. Right. So.

Funny. And people, and the sort of, I was on a webpage just trying to read people's interpretations of Q's posts. And this one I found

to be the wildest one. And I just want to show you Q's entire post. It's just a couple lines. And then I want to read to the interpretation of it. Okay. So this is the post, the thing in red right here. Oh, it's really

all code. Like, it's like underscore conf DTT, V891, 0600, yes. Green 1, 0600, Bunker, Apple, yellow, sky, dot, dot, yes, Godspeed Q. What it looked like to me. That's literally what he wrote. That's all he wrote. So he's like, it's like,

hey guys, and then underscore conf, underscore D, dash TT, underscore. It looks like a random bit of computer. Yeah, it looks like weird. What it looks like to me is when you use one of those strong password generators. Yeah.

Jocuzzi Mirage. Bunker Apple, Yellow Sky would be a good password. And directly beneath that, one of Q's followers says that they've decoded what all of that gobbledygook means. And what it means is there was some kind of military mission to capture someone named Lord Rothschild of Aylesbury. And others, if they could. but the helicopter was intercepted by someone on the mission failed, as Q explained later. Has Q ever explained why he has to communicate in decipherable code? Um, no.

Okay. You know what I mean? I mean, yes. Can I just say, I mean, I know where you're still explaining, but like, I feel a thousand percent certain that Q is a prankster. It's like an old school 4chan person who knows what they're doing. Like the small business day thing, I feel like Hugh is having fun with people. I feel like it's either someone who is doing an epic troll, basically, or someone who genuinely believes all of this stuff.

I would, I would believe, genuinely believe, if it weren't for the small business day thing. But that's just like, that's like a canny move to be like, it's going to be small business day if I predict that, Donald Trump will tweet the word small on that day. It'll be proof of my access to him. Like, that's a person who is being clever about, he's not, like, convincing himself of things and backwards justifying them. He's planning to do something that will make him look.

I mean, maybe he thinks, like, Obama's bad and is in league with a Rothschild. But, like, one of the things I recognize in this is, like, the pleasure that the Q anon, the storm people are having in decoding the message, Like, this is one of the things the internet does really well. Like, this video game I'm really excited about. Yesterday they put out a teaser for it.

And the teaser was like a very static shot of a room. And people were like, oh, the trophy in the bookcase means that the game's going to be like online only. And like people being a little bit indecipherable so that people interpret them and like doling out clues. Like, that's a thing. And like, it's a skill. And this QAnon has the skill. The one thing I'll say that lends credence to your theory is that, Like I said, early on, Q would post in actual paragraphs and make declarative statements about people getting indicted, et cetera, et cetera.

They have definitely pulled back to be. Q has. Q has. Has definitely pulled back to being much more sort of cryptic. And because they've gotten better at what they're doing. They're like a great songwriter. It's like, you leave room for people. He looks back at those old posts.

He was like, I was such a hack back then. I can't believe people listen to that stuff. And they think that's my classics? Thanks. Q, Q actually oversteps a couple times and upsets people. Says something to the effect of like a video documentation of Hillary Clinton performing Satanist rituals is going to come out. It doesn't come out. People are like, are you full of it?

What's going on here? So Q has pulled back and has tried to be and basically reacts to the day's news by asking these like Socratic questions. Yeah. And I mean, you're right. For the bakers, I feel like this is almost like Bible study. You see these things that can be interpreted in a million different ways. They all sit around and try and pick them apart. What they're doing sounds like there's stakes to this and it's not good to convince people of untrue things that make them scared and believe violence is happening.

But just the pure joy of someone doling out clues, like I totally get why this is appealing to people. I also think it's appealing because it confirmed. the interpretation they've come up with and that Q has sort of let them run with really confirms all of their greatest dreams and impulses. And we're nightmares, totally. Right.

So remember, this whole thing started in October. And in the past six or seven months, it's basically, it's really grown. Like, it's huge. There are YouTube videos that have like half a million views. There's a subreddit that has 30,000 members. Someone made an app that allowed you. that allowed you to search for key search keywords and cue posts and it hit the top 10 in iTunes what what's the app called I'm not sure huh wait I wanted to hold on it's called Q drops Q drops like picking up what Q drops you don't know it's like cool yeah picking up the bread crumbs that Q drops the Q drops and like Sean Hannity retweeted this guy called praying medic who's like one of the sort of major people in the Q&on universe who is tweeting a Q&on hashtag

Like, it's finding purchase in the soil of more mainstream conservative people. And Praying Medic was one of the ones that the original tweet that you read was mentioned. And then in April, a bunch of the bakers, the people who follow the QAnon conspiracy very closely, completely independently of Q. Q doesn't ask them to do this or anything. They put together a march on Washington. What? Yeah. That is wild.

Yeah. Okay, this is footage from the actual March. Red pill white hats? Yes. ICQ people. These are the signs Trump 2020. Can I say the most surprising thing about these people? So, like, they're like white men and women mostly.

They're not 18 or 20. Like, they're like, they look like people in their 40s and 50s, a lot of them. Yeah. That's not who I think of as being on 4chan. Yeah, they look like, they're like wearing sensible shit. shoes and like running clothes and windbreakers and they look like carrying travel mugs and they would like be like moms and dads on like ms Smithsonian tours oh totally yeah yeah and then when they reach the end of their march they actually have like a podium set up there are a couple

speeches that take place um here let me find a clip from one of the speeches hold on just a second Not in them. But I do believe there are people who are fighting for its country. I believe that Q&N is leading the charge in helping us to fight for our country. And he told us to stay together. We've got to do that, right?

And so I'm so thankful for so many sites. I'm so thankful for all the people who have... She just sounds like a person who deeply believes that something horrible is going on and she's like testifying. Yes. And like the belief that they are awake while the rest of the world is asleep.

Right. Huh. Yeah, it's funny. like watching, it's like, it's watching this, it's just, you get the sense that like Q, you know, who's essentially this human equivalent of a random password generator is, it's almost like he's becoming this sort of like focal point for all these disparate, marginalized people who believe crazy things. Like he's sort of their uniting force, you know? Right. And anytime anything anything happens in the, in the media, even if it's totally unrelated, anytime there's a sex trafficking arrest,

It doesn't matter what agency or what country it's in. People see it as proof that Q is telling the truth, that the storm is coming. Anytime there's a resignation of a powerful executive or a conspiracy that involves a government official either in the U.S. or in a U.S. related country, it's because Q has caused them to resign. It's because the storm has come and those people are residing. So wait, here is my question, though. Roseanne. So do we know, like, how long has Roseanne? Zan been into all this stuff.

So right about the time her show came back, she tweeted something that was a very direct reference to Q's conspiracy. She tweeted, President Trump has freed so many children held in bondage to pimps all over the world, hundreds each month. He's broken up trafficking rings

and high places everywhere. Notice that. I disagree on some things, but give him the benefit of the doubt for now. She tweeted that with no context. March 31st, which is like right about the, time her show came out. And everyone in the mainstream media suddenly sat up and was like,

what the hell is she talking about? And what she was talking about was Q&U. Right. She's also tweeted just very plainly. And I think they've been deleted now. Who is Q and tell Q&on to DME in the next 24 hours? Wow. Really? Yeah. Wow. And even the tweet that got her show canceled, the one about Valerie Jarrett and Plenty of the Apes. That is Q related because Valerie Jarrett is like a player in the Q conspiracy world. It's someone that the Q&N people talk about all the time. Right. Because like that was like, that was one of the questions I had is like, why is she going after this person who was like, worked for President Obama who is not like, like, you kind of have to be into politics to know who Valerie Jarrett is, even like to have an

opinion about her. I had to look her up. But like, I guess in Roseanne's mind, it's like, people shouldn't be focusing on the fact that she said something racist. It's like in her mind she's like, guys, ignore that. Like, I'm showing you this like great evil. Like, why don't you pay attention? Right. And it actually makes sense because like another tweet that I saw, one of the things that Rosanne retweeted today actually, let me read you this. In 24 hours at The Real Roseanne has brought attention to Valerie Jarrett and her ties to Muslim Brotherhood.

Hypocrisy of the Left. George Soros being a criminal. dangers of Ambien, because she says she only said that stuff because she had taken an ambient, and she's not racist. Big farm and how they view people who take their drugs. Thanks, Roseanne. But I think she does see herself as a martyr for, like, the storm. Right. And she, it seems like, it seems like she's sort of like the storm's most prominent member.

Yeah. For sure. Wow. God. And look, you retweeted this. It all makes sense now. at The Real Roseanne was setting the stage hashtag. How many were even focused on Valerie Jarrett before today?

So now they're saying Rosanne intentionally lost her job to focus attention on Valerie Jarrett. It's just one more move in that four to ten dimensional chess game. Yeah. God. Wow. Also, as we were looking through this, I noticed that people said they think Michael Flynn is cute. Is cute? Cute.

Oh, okay. Do you know what we've been talking about this whole time? We used the word cute at once. Just like trying to think of whether or not I thought Michael Flynn was cute. And then I was like, maybe they're talking about his son. Like, anyway. So, PJ, Alex, I feel like I've done a decent job waiting through this. I'm wondering, PJ, if you feel like you're at the point where you can recap this for me.

Yes, I think I can explain. I'm not going to, like, go through every single question. but I think I can explain what is going on in this tweet. Remind me just how does the tweet start again? The tweet starts, whoa! Doesn't it start like, whoa! Yes, it does. Well, it actually starts, lighting, lighting vault, lightning bolt, whoa!

Right, the lightning bolts. Which now I understand. Right. Oh, the storm. Yes. Right. Hashtag Qadon C. Roseanne was great about Muslim Brotherhood and Isis.

Hashtag Q Post 44, Lightning Bolt, bomb, all these people being tagged. This is a person. saying, look what just happened. Like, everybody in QAnon rally. Like, one of our people, Roseanne just got taken out. And what she was talking about was foretold in the QAnon scripture. And what was going to happen to her. I think this person is also saying was foretold in the Q&on scripture.

Basically, right. What she was talking about was in Q&ONONPost 484. And what was going to happen to her was in Q&N post, whatever it was. And it is sort of like Bible study. He's like, if you look at this one, old cue post, you see that Roseanne was talking about cue issues. And if you look at this other one, I think you see evidence that this was going to happen. Right. And that therefore, this is just one more breadcrum. Yeah. To be, to be gathered up. And then at the end of it, he says, isn't Michael Flynn cute?

I think we're at, yes, yes, yes. I think we're at cute, cute, cute. Cute, cute, cute, cute. After the break, an explosive tip from an anonymous source. Welcome back to the show. All right, Bloomberg, do you have a tweet for us? Yes, I do. Are you ready? Yes.

Yeah. Here's the tweet. I'm going to show it to you. Okay. Oh, I know what's going on this week. Okay. So it's from a Twitter account called Sports Are Philly. Man, I know I've been in this country before.

Wow, you're really telegraphing what this is all. replying to Joelle Unbeed, Sam Hinkie, and the famous Al Vic 401-7-560. Yes. And it's just an image of a basketball court, like in the city, like an outdoor basketball court. And there's a tiny man with someone else's head pasted on his body that kind of looks like Vladimir Putin. And then a taller, more like athletic man who is.

with one hand holding a basketball above his head. He looks like he's about to shoot a one-handed three-point basket shot. Almost. Three-point basket shot. I knew what I was doing. Are you one of those people who says 3 a.m. in the morning? A famous three-point basket shot. A three-pointer from outside the paints.

Yep. Ball. Okay. Alex Goldman. Do you understand? So, PJ, do you know either of the people in this picture? Actually, I know a little bit about this. I know that that non-photoshop man is Joel Embed,

who's a famous basketball player for the 76ers. Yes. And I actually know what this still is from, but I have no idea what point they're using it to make. Got it. Okay. Alex Goldman, do you understand this tweet? No.

Not at all. Okay. Alex Bloomberg. Do you understand what's going on in this tweet? I do. And what's going on in this tweet is the most exciting story that perhaps I've ever brought to you. Really? As part of sports, sports, sports.

Okay. The offshoot of yes, yes, no. I can't believe we have a segment on our show called Sports Sports. I very much understand this tweet. Actually, before we start, Breakmaster made us a sports, sports, sports team. Ready? What? Yeah.

And welcome once again to Sports Sports Sports. sports. That's amazing. Can I hear it again? Yes. Big finish. So good. So that's what we're about to go into. Are you guys ready? I am extremely ready. Yes. So this is the most exciting Internet Detective story. I might have ever heard. So I started with this tweet because there's a lot of tweets about the story, but this one just picks up on the story that we've talked about before, which is the process. Remember we had that?

Yeah, can I try to recap it and see if I can do it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, recap the process. Okay, so previously on sports, sports, sports. You and fellow basketball fan slash 76ers fan, Gene Denby from NPR, came in and explained to us that basically, for a number of years, the basketball team, the Philadelphia 76ers, intentionally, they had this, like, Maverick GM named Sam Hinky. Yeah.

And his plan, which people ended up calling the process, his plan was, we're going to make this team as bad as possible so that we're given extremely good draft picks. And then eventually we can become a really great team. So the 76ers ended up drafting this guy Joelle and Bede, who's an amazing charismatic basketball player. He was so good that people started calling him the process. The 76ers became a much better team. Hinky was not there to see it because he was fired before his plan could fully come to fruition. I know that this tweet that you just showed us, I know that. that we're back in the process story because two of the people who are added are Sam Hinky and

Joelle and Bede. I also happen to know that that original thing, the videos from, I just saw this. It was like, Joel B. showed up at some, like, park in Philadelphia and just, like, killed some kid and pick up basketball. Like, he bounced the ball off his head or something. So that's why I wanted to start because there was this, like, because one of the pleasures of the story is just Joe L. Embed himself. He's just, like, this incredibly charismatic person and this really smart, funny internet presence Sounds like you're describing me almost. Case in point. He just started randomly.

He's a superstar, and he started randomly showing up to these random basketball courts in Philly, and just playing randos on the street, and then he'll just like dunk on them. It's brutal. And I'm sure that was the best day in that guy's life. Yeah. That guy was like, so that we'll go down in history

as like the day that Joel L.M.B. dunked over him. Anyway, that's just the table setting for this story, which is just sort of like, Joe L. M. Bid is being Joe L. in a funny way. But the things in this tweet that I really want to draw your attention to that are sort of the basis of the story that I'm about to tell is the photoshopped face on the guy that Jolumbed is dunking over, and one of the accounts that this tweet is replying to, the account

Al Vic 401-17560. Okay. And the Photoshop face is Brian Colangelo. Brian Colangelo. Yes. So Brian Colangelo is the new GM of the Philadelphia 76ers. He replaced Sam Hinky. He replaced Sam Hinky. Yes, he did. And he took over a couple years ago, and he has to make Hinky's plan work.

And he's constantly getting compared to Hinky. And so a couple weeks ago, this reporter named Ben Dietrich, who writes for this website, The Ringer, comes out with this incredibly explosive story, which starts like this. He gets a DM from a mysterious unnamed, from a mysterious unnamed source.

The source says, I work in AI, and I have been looking at these five Twitter accounts that are sort of gossiping about Sixers' players and gossiping about like Sixers' front office stuff. And I am almost certain, because of my prowess at AI, that they are all the same person. Okay. And I think that person that they're all belonged to,

this guy says, is Brian Colangelo. What? Okay. So Brian Clangelo... The theory is... As of two days ago. The general manager of the 76ers is sock puppeting a bunch of Twitter accounts to some purpose. And the evidence that he supplies, that this unnamed source applies to Ben Dietrich, the writer and the ringer, is very, very compelling and entertaining.

Okay. Okay? So I'm just going to go through a couple of them. But before I do that, so... So, you know, I told Gene Demby that I was going to do this. Gene, again, is the host of NPR's Code Switch podcast. And because, like, Gene was here for our last one, I figured we should get him on the phone too.

Okay. Yeah, totally. All right. So, Chris, could you call up Gene? Hey, NPR. We are inclined to talk to Gene Denby, who I think is in one of your voice booths over there. If it's possible, just patch us through to the phone in the voice booth. Thanks.

Do you read about that Twitch streamer? Mm-hmm. What a dipshit. Yeah. Did another Twitch streamer? This one was different. This one is different. There's a Twitch streamer who I had never heard before.

He's Australian and he got famous for making songs out of clips of Disney movies. Like he would be like, I'm making a song only out of songs. Oh, no, I'm talking about something totally different. Oh, this guy. Are you sure? The thing I was talking about is. There's a guy on Twitch calls himself Arabandi.

He's this Arabic dude. And one of his schicks is that he will mount speakers to himself, walk around. And if people donate to his channel, they will be allowed to broadcast whatever they want over the speakers. Oh, that's not good.

And so he was walking around the University of Washington doing this, getting kicked out of classes and things like that. And someone paid him money and broadcast. bomb threat to a class that he was in.

Oh, my God. Like, the whole thing was a live stream. So he's like, oh, my God, that was so fucked up. That was so funny. Oh, my God. And then he continues walking around doing the same thing. And the cops come and arrest him. He's like, dude, bro, I didn't do anything.

It was a TTS donation. He was like, it was a Twitch stream donation. There's like a whole. It's like all on video. And it's so crackers. That's so funny. Hello? Hey, Gene.

Gene. Hey, what's going on? How you? Good. How are you? I'm good. Thanks for joining us again for Yes, Yes, No, the Process Part 2, better than the original. Electric Bougaloo. So before we even get to the evidence that Calangelo is behind these burner accounts,

can I just ask you, Gene, as a Sixers fan, do you think that Brian Colangelo is a good guy, bad guy? Are you indifferent to him? How do you feel about him? As of three days ago, how did you feel about him? I was always sort of indifferent to Brian Kalangelo. So the thing you need to like, I don't know if you have ever seen a picture of Brian Kalangelo, but he basically looks like the dude in the breakdancing movie who's trying to shut down the community center.

Like he looks like he's been a hilarious. Like he's like kind of an evil doer. And he's also like the beneficiary of all this nepotism. His father, Jerry Kalangelo, is a really big deal in like American basketball. So there's a way in which like Brian Kalangelo has this sort of reputation as sort of like a rich Yeah. And in fact, Jerry Colangelo, the father, was the person who the NBA basically put on the Sixers staff to get them to write their ship after Hinky was fired. And after they'd done that, they decided that the best person for the job of manager was Jerry's son, Brian Colangelo. All right. So in this explosive article from two days ago where these five different random Twitter accounts all seem like they could be linked to Brian Colangelo or somebody that the source believed was close to Brian Colangelo. So the source lays out to Ben Dietrich, the writer, a bunch of very compelling pieces of evidence. And the first piece of evidence that I want to present to you is what I'm calling the collar tweet.

Yes. All right. So Brian Colangelo's collar is sort of became its own story. There's this Philly sports writer who wrote an article about how you can tell what kind of news Brian Calangelo is delivering in a press conference by the size and starchedness of his collar. And so then that became, like then all this attention was focused on his collars and his collars are big. One of the burner accounts sort of said, someone was sort of making fun of Brian Calangelo's collars. Like, this dude loves his collars on his shirt.

He wears his collar shirts. And the burner account was sort of like, weirdly. Yeah, from one of it's like, that is a normal collar. Move on. Find a new slant. And so now there's like half of Sixers Twitter is like, find a new slant. That's become the rallying cry. That's become the rallying cry, yeah.

Another thing, a lot of the burner accounts follow the University of Chicago basketball team and a bunch of players on the University of Chicago basketball team. And the University of Chicago is a college that is completely meaningless for the NBA. Like, nobody from the University of Chicago will ever come close to being in a conversation about going to the NBA. It's just a bad basketball school. There is one reason why you might want to follow the UFC basketball team, though. And that is, if your son plays for them, which brings.

Brian Colangelo's son, Mattia, does. Oh, wow. So it's like there's a group of people on the internet who care about defending Brian Colangelo's collars and following Brian Colangelo's son and his college basketball career. Yes. Okay. So far. Yeah.

So the next favorite subject of these alleged burner accounts is the previous GM of the Philadelphia 76ers, Sam Hinky. And how he's overrated and did a really bad job. And so all these burner accounts are constantly talking about, like, are just constantly taking issue with like the Hinky worship and are like just really bitter about like he didn't do, like, so for example. They're fighting with process trussers. They're fighting with process trusters all the time. So, so for example, one of the burner accounts talks about Hinky saying he's, quote,

a pathological egomaniac. It's like, oh, there's one that says, From one of the burner accounts, this burner account that goes by the name Eric Jr., he's getting in a fight with a bunch of process. Like there's an account called Process Saved Me, which is all a pro-Hinkie account. And he's getting in this Eric Jr. account is getting in a fight with it. And one of the quotes is, BC has done nothing, B.C. Brian Colangelo, has done nothing but clean up Hinky's mess. Hinky got great pieces, but couldn't make the puzzle work. There was another.

And there's a bunch more like that. So that's the hinky bucket of evidence. The next bucket of evidence, all these tweets attacking Joelle Embed. So Brian Colangelo, right, he's from this basketball dynasty, you know, that goes way back. And in the old days, there was this old school approach to dealing with injuries, which was players are supposed to play through them. They're supposed to tough it out and that you don't sit down because of a minor injury. That is not how people think about it today at all. but like and so so joel and bide had like these sore knees and like but there was this televised game against a good team and so

joel and bade ever ended up playing in that game and uh tearing his meniscus and so then he was out for like what they said at the time was like a couple weeks and then it ended up ended up being the whole season the whole season yeah yeah and and there was a lot of criticism for colangelo of just sort of like letting that happen? And what's interesting is that these burner accounts had always been up until this point very pro-Juell and B.

And then all of a sudden this happens and they all start coming out and then blaming it on Joel. Like one of the accounts wrote, Joel, you were just a kid, but why didn't you tell Doc knees hurt before Houston? You costed yourself and us

nine plus games and playoffs. That was when they still thought it was just like a two-week injury. Oh, wow. And then there was a... And then basically all the accounts just turn on Joel.

And they start calling him whiny. They say he's a baby. He's like too demonstrative on the court. I mean, they basically sort of start to sort of go agile and be like he's not sort of the cornerstone player anymore. And also there's all this. And it just gets really ugly and like coated. Like he starts calling him lazy and just sort of like.

Yeah. Yeah. And the thing that really set these Twitter accounts off was this thing that we talked about in our last yes just know about this, that meek milk concert where Joe Joel and Bede shows up and starts dancing with his shirt off. Right? So somebody, and as soon as that footage surfaced online, these burner accounts are just irate about it. They just go crazy about it.

Why? Well, I'll tell you. So one of these burner accounts, Eric Jr., links to this tweet that shows Joel and Bid dancing, which everybody is like, look at Joelle. It's so fun. Right? And Eric Jr. He is the one who tells Doxie still feels pain and knee. And then this, no respect.

He's dancing for 20 seconds. I know it's not the same as playing basketball game. Exactly. But like, yeah. And then another one of the burner accounts. He is out of shape and a bit lazy. I am tired to just trust him, do something. Wow.

So right. So this is the really interesting dynamic here is that like everyone in Sixers land, people are like, oh, look, the Sixers have this bright future. And this person is weirdly going at Joel Embed, who is going to be the star of the team. Like, this person has an act. a grind, like, against this player who, at this point, it's, like, universally beloved in the Sixers fan base. It's very, I mean, leaving aside all the weird connections this person has, it's, like, a very

weird position to take. This is, like, a very weird trolley, sort of corner to occupy, you know? Right. The only reason to have a problem with Joel and Bede is if you have a stake in defending Brian Clanchel. Right. Exactly. Okay.

So now back to the article, right? This tipster lays out all this incredibly compelling evidence to the writer, Benjee. Dietrich. And then Ben Dietrich does this incredibly canny thing. He's like, obviously, I have to figure out if this is true or not, but I don't want to tip my hand completely. So he calls the Sixers and says, I've gotten this information that there might be burner accounts associated with Brian Colangelo or something like that. And I'm just calling to get like seek comment. He doesn't say how many and he doesn't give the names. He names two. And they come back and And Brian Colangelo comes back and is like, there's one that is mine.

So he admits one, but it's the least sort of like, it's the tamest one. And he's like, I don't know about this other one. But then immediately after that call, all the other three burner accounts go private. Ah! Yep. And he doesn't, he doesn't, the reporter doesn't tell him about the other accounts. He, like, you know, like the other ones were not mentioned in this conversation. What a, what a.

He's so bad at the internet. He does the worst obsequc of any person who's ever lived. The article comes out in the evening of Tuesday evening, I believe. The Phillies, which is a baseball team from Philadelphia, not a basketball team. We don't have to condescend that much to me. Are playing an away game in Los Angeles. So it's still sort of like early evening in Los Angeles when the article comes out. Apparently all the Sixers fans in attendance are checking their Twitter.

They all read the article at the same time, I guess. and chance of the process erupt at the baseball game, at an away game in LA. The night this story comes out. It's crossing into other sports. And then the then. My phone exploded. Like, it was just like, like, like, you gotta read this.

My girlfriend said, I'm like, yo, this shit is crazy. And like, but the crazy, this actually still gets crazier still. So Twitter takes the sleuthing, right? Like, everyone in basketball Twitter starts to like try to figure out, okay. like Brian these are clearly Brian this is clearly Brian Calangelo right the evidence is overwhelming if circumstantial right um and so they start trying to ascertain like okay let's figure out if they have the same email address um or you know yeah because you can phone number is associated with if you pretend that you've forgotten your password to a Twitter account right it'll show you the beginning of the email address for your recovery thing yes I've been told or it'll show you the uh or the phone number associated with account it'll show you the last two digits the last two digits of the phone number. Oh, no. So the last two digits of the phone number associated with the accounts is 9-1.

And I'm sorry, this is too funny. The phone number of Brian Calangelo's wife ends in 9-1. Oh, my God! His wife, Barbara Bettini, was a, was, um, is, she was born in Italy. She speaks Italian, which explains some of the language stuff in the tweets, like some of the grammar stuff. And there are some instances in the tweets in which the currency symbol is behind a number. So, like, when she says they're like, oh, this person got this big contract for 30, whatever,

the symbol comes after, right? Which is, like, the way you would do it in Italy. And so, Twitter basically, from, there was, like, maybe, like, two or three hours when everyone was like, oh, Brian Colangelo did this and he's going to get fired to three hours later. I'd be like, oh, shit, his wife did this and he's going to get fired out of here. That's so crazy. I was literally going to say earlier, I was like, it's as if the conversations he has with his wife when he comes home as he's having them with Twitter instead. Yes.

Exactly. It is exactly. Has Brian or his wife issued any kind of statement? Like, have they said anything? So as of now, Brian Colangelo is vociferously denying that anything, any of the other for-burner, any of the other accounts had anything to do with him or his family. His statement is someone's out to get me. Like this is like, this is an attack.

My enemies are now circling and they're using Twitter to take me down. You would need so much foreplanning. It's such a low percentage shot. I know. That, like, was somebody's going to figure out the metadata thing and, like, look at the last two digits, the phone number, and then, like, yeah, that's all. Like, we started planting these burner accounts two years ago.

So, obviously, okay. So now, I think at this point in the story, you guys are ready to see one more thing. Okay, okay. Which is the tweet that that original tweet I showed you is replying to. Okay. So remember, the original tweet was, just like the picture of Joel Embed, dunking on somebody with Brian Colangelo's face put it over.

And it was replying to this other tweet. And here's the tweet that it is, that it was replying to. Oh, it was replying to Joel Embed himself. Yes. And Joelle M. Bid is saying, Joelle Mbitt is saying, Joel told me that Sam Hinky is, in all caps, better and smarter than you. at ALVIC 40117-560, hashtag burner account.

Is he tweeting at one of Colangelo's burner accounts? Al-Vick is one of the burner accounts, one of the alleged blurner. And he's basically pertaining to the same thing. He's like pretending to be Joelle Embed tweeting as a like ghost sock puppet account without realizing that he's screwing out. Right. It's like, it's a very intentional joke. It's very much like sort of like, oh, I forgot to tweet from my burner account.

Right. What a good burn. It's so good. Wow. Imagine like all of, if, if, if, Colangelo is going to stick around. Like, let's say there's some chance that he keeps his job. He's going to have to mend so many bridges, right?

Like, he's already, like, clearly gone after his superstar and Joel Embed, right? Or someone close to him, his wife or him. Like, it's going to be, like, this massive, like, sort of, like, apology tour, internal apology tour among the Sixers between Calangelo and the players on the team, you know? I can't imagine how uncomfortable their interactions must be from this point on. God. Yeah. All right.

So I think we've reached the end of our long, of our long, long. Long journey into sports, sports, sports. Long journey into sports, sports. Would, how do you feel about, does anyone feel ready to explain this tweet now? I think I can. All right. All right. Here we go.

The tweet is from Twitter account called at SportsR. Philly. It's replying to Joel M. Sam Hinky and ALVIC 40117560. It's just an image from a, from a video taken of Joel M. Bede playing on a street basketball court. What the fuck, dude? And his opponent has a face photoshopped onto it, which I now know is Brian

Colangelo. Brian Colangelo is the general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers, and also allegedly, the owner of either the owner or the husband of the owner of several Twitter burner accounts that were used to divulge personal information about players and ruthlessly defend Brian Colangelo from any criticism. them. And the tweet is replying to one of the 76 or star players, the former GM, and one of the burner accounts that allegedly belongs to Brian Colangelo and his wife. And it is a direct response to a tweet from Joelle Embede, which is making fun of these burner accounts, that says, Joel told me that Sam Hinky is better and smarter than you, Al Vic, 40117560, hashtag burner account, which is basically a direct rebuttal to his general manager for almost certainly running this burner account. Right. How'd I do?

Did pretty good. That's really good. That was really good. Can you imagine what a bad week Brian Calangelo is having? Never tweet. Oh, man. That's a good point. Never tweet. Okay. I think we're at sports, sports, sports. Sports.

Yes, we are. Gene, thanks for helping us again. Yeah, thanks, Gene. It was fun. I'm so glad. It's so fun to kick to each out. Reply-all is hosted by PJ Vote and me, Alex Goldman. Our shows produced by Shruthy Pinnaminati, Fia Bennon, Damiano Marquetti, Chris Neary, and Anna Foley.

Our editor is Tim Howard, and we had extra help this week from our boss, Alex Bloomberg. Our intern is Jessica Young, and our outgoing intern is Devin Gwyn. Devin, thank you for all of your help. We really enjoyed working with you. Special thanks this week to Gene Denby. You can find his work on the CodeSwitch blog at npr.org slash section slash code switch and to Paris Martineau, a reporter at the outline who wrote the definitive Q&ONN explainer earlier this year and taught me basically everything I know about Q&ON.

We will put links to her stories in the show notes. We were mixed by Rick Kwan and Emma Munger, fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our theme song is by the mysterious breakmaster cylinder. Matt Lieber is the incredible satisfaction of making Shruthy Pinnamini laugh. You can find more episodes of the show on iTunes and Spotify. Thanks for listening. We'll see you in a couple weeks. I think we've made it to the bridge. Yeah, you know, between verse and chorus.

Neither here nor there. Yeah, the piano teleports us from planet to planet. We pass through another dimension just for a moment. I think this is that bridge, except it's not dropping us off this time. The universe has crumbled into a ball around us, effectively gathering every point to the same place. Ride the infinity loop, bouncing off all destinations near simultaneously. The possibilities are endless.

We need only hit the switch again to land. Yeah, that sounds right. Hey, was I talking just now? That's too many possibilities. You know that thing where you're statistically less likely to choose a mustard if you're given six quintillion choices per second? It's very discouraging. Never mind, it's all going by too fast to be selective about it.

Here, look, it's like cosmic roulette. Singing shapes. Green snow falling up. Childhood smell planet. Let's see. Spiders. Found his laser bats. I like that piano from Big.

Uh, it's like sex, but purple. Really regressing Stevie Nix planet. Bouncy Castle. Animals hovering overhead. Telepathic Beaver Planet. Those things are hitting things with other things. Unlimited breadsticks. Dogs made of yogurt.

Friday night chicken cake. Vontage Planet. That was pretty good.