The Daily - 'Rabbit Hole,' Episode 8: 'We Go All'

Episode Date: June 6, 2020

Note: This episode contains strong language. Today, we’re sharing the series finale of “Rabbit Hole,” a Times podcast with the tech columnist Kevin Roose. In this episode, we follow one QAnon believer’s journey through faith and loss — and what becomes of reality as our lives move online. For more information on “Rabbit Hole” and today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/rabbithole.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. Today, Rabbit Hole. Episode 8. I remember before the Internet, and the minute the internet was available, I had private tutors come over to my house and teach me. From day one, the awe of it, and the whole world is at your fingertips with a few clicks of your mouth. The power of it takes my breath away.

Would you do me a favor and just introduce yourself real quick? I don't want to use my name. Okay. Can you just introduce yourself maybe just with your first name? Well, I can't know because that's my name on Twitter. My nickname is Sam. So you can just call me Sam. Sure. If you want me to do an introduction like,

Hi, this is Sam. I got out of the cube cult. So should you. Had you ever been attracted to a conspiracy theory before? No. No, not at all. The 9-11, the moon, the flat earth, no. But I know the financial system is rigged against us. I've watched it. I've lived it. Let's talk about the speed with which we are watching this market deteriorate. In 2008. Traders say this is the craziest day they have ever seen.

I lost everything in the housing collapse. Houses are in foreclosure in a slump triggered by subprime mortgage. Many say they've been left in shock and are simply waiting to see what will happen next. And then $700 billion to rescue the country's failing banks. kind of in mourning. And so I had different stages. You go through a grieving process. You go to anger. I pretty much got stuck in anger. Holy moly. And then...

They're calling this the big one, perhaps the worst in a generation. When Irma came through... More than 6 million Floridians have been told to evacuate. I was just devastated again. Tonight, the images now emerging of the utter destruction Hurricane Irma left behind. It was a nightmare. Buildings and trees ripped apart.

Hundreds now homeless. Got out with maybe 10% of my belongings in my car. And my friends said, well, just come live with me. I'd known him 10 years. homeless. just got out of college and was trying to figure out what to do with their lives. I was very emotionally fragile at that time. And I wasn't working. I had a lot of time on my hands. I spent a lot of time online. I had the whole house to myself all day. And I would put YouTube onto giant TV.

And then YouTube recommended the QAnon to me. That's how I found them. Before you found Q, like right before that, what YouTube videos were you watching? Before Q? Mm-hmm. What a music. I would listen to Whiskey. I trembled by Turtles.

And Panatonic Hallelujah. I watched Elizabeth Warren. America has always been some poor, some rich, and a big, big, solid middle class. She is amazing. It's part of what gives us our political stability. It's what affects our economy and drives our economy. It affects our self-identity. It affects who we are in this world. She did an analysis of how the monetary system is set up to favor the wealthy.

I fear that what's happening and what these data are about is that we actually are going to see a larger upper class. And then the rest is just one long trail of underclass. It's about an hour and a half long video. I've probably watched it four times. And there it is, inflation-adjusted dollars, a 76% increase in what a family spends on a mortgage. That's the mortgage payment. It gave me an explanation as to why it's so difficult to thrive. And I think what this means is that it's time to realign our political interests and alliances. It helped me to not personalize it, that I did something wrong. To talk more about what's happening to these families.

So with that, I'm going to quit and take as many questions as people have. And then I was watching Lynette Zeng. If you had a $20 bill 20 years ago and you have a $20 bill today, nominally, they're identical. They're both $20 bills. But what that would buy you 20 years ago and what that buys you today is vastly different. The original J.P. Morgan said it best. Gold is money. Everything else is credit.

She's definitely all about holding gold. Hey, friends, Sean from SGTReport.com here with an important silver, gold and cryptocurrency update. I would watch the SGT Report, too. At SGTReport.com, where we bring you real news 24-7. I have on the line right now... Another pundit on the global banking system and what's going on with the market. Bye-bye, banker. Bye-bye, banker.

Bye-bye, banker. No bailouts come this time. I really enjoyed his channel a lot. The dollar is in the process of dying. And I would watch Jim Willey, who's the author of The Golden Jackass. It's all about asset-backed currency. The member banks of the Federal Reserve, the regional bank, they all report to the main headquarters. And they serve the Wall Street banks and the big banks of the United States.

That's what I was watching. For governments, the key in this is it's inflation. All day. I mean, the whole thing is a con and now it's breaking down. That's what we get to watch. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm so glad. So many are still asleep at the wheel.

They're locked in their iPhone. This is sickening stuff, undermining democracy. It's been undermined now for the last 30 years. It's not a new trend. And I wonder at the time, like, was that your main source of information? Like, were you also looking at more mainstream news outlets? Definitely watch mainstream news.

Absolutely. Because then you can compare what they say to what's really going on. That's when YouTube recommended this video to me about QAnon. Hello, it's Katie G. How's everybody doing tonight? I'm going to play a video while we're waiting for people to come in and get myself set up here. So let's see.

Turn the camera off. Ready? Here we go. Down the rabbit hole. Katie G. What's her name? Oh, there we go. She's adorable.

I'm live. And funny and giggly. What happens when 90% of the media is controlled, owned by six corporations? And smart. What happens when those same corporations are operated and controlled by a political ideology? How does the average person who is under constant financial stress by design find time to research and discern fact versus fiction? They don't.

We are the news now. She was a deep diver. She was what I consider to be a research-based analyst. Would POTUS make a serious accusation if truth wasn't about to come to light? Let's go back to POTUS's post again. So he mentions... Look at the picture here. It's our George Washington crossing the Delaware. Very impressive lady. Now DOD uses the same picture crossing the Delaware. In my mind, okay, they're going to go after the bank. This is from December 7, 2017.

He says Rothschilds, cult leaders, church, banks, financial. So they control the banks and the financial institutions, the worldwide government control. And the politicians that are on the payola and doing deals behind closed doors that are unaudited. That's what sucked me in. This is an old post from Q. Stay together, be strong, fight the censorship. You, the people, have all the power. This to me is a confirmation of what I had said before. It felt like a part of something that was really meaningful. Oh, this is so big, you guys.

It's so big. We can't even believe how big it is. We're fixing everything. The world's going to change. The good guys are winning. Hey, guys, it's Katie G. It's like 2.30 in the morning here where I am. And I couldn't wait to see the next Katie G video.

We have a new Q post. Knew it was coming. I knew it. Or Deception Bites video. All right, I got it up. Let me read this out. Here we go. Okay, here we go.

And I would wait, anticipate every drop. I couldn't wait to see what was going to be next. Everything has meaning. Who is Ambassador Matlock? When a new Q drop would come, I would have a visceral reaction. There is a purpose for every tweet. Like a physical joy. The Great Awakening. No deals. Trust the plan. Like a physical joy. The Great Awakening.

No deals. Trust the plan. Happy Sunday. Thank you. Goosebumps. We have allowed ourselves to be controlled by the puppet masters. And we will continue to let them control us until we are put in a situation

where we will either surrender all personal freedoms or we will throw off the chains of oppression. So, Q posted this from 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. What got me out was they posted Bible verses immediately no record of wrongs love does not delight in evil but that it was fake i was like okay let me get this straight we're military intelligence we've got a secret channel that we can communicate and we're going to proselytize about the Bible and risk a military channel that's leaking?

No. It makes no sense at all to me. It's because my father was military. I grew up in a military ops. I knew that that was just a marketing ploy. I mean, they were hitting their market base. Their market base are conservative church ladies, you know, the middle America, the Joe Six Pack. That's who they're marketing.

And they wanted to bring the religious aspect in so they could broaden their base so they can make more money on the t-shirts and the mugs and the donations and the app memberships. So you felt like Q, whoever it was, had been taking a risk by posting these secrets and this classified information and that like if Q were real and really part of this military intelligence operation, that they wouldn't post a Bible verse because it was... You're either military intelligence or you're a preacher. And if you're a military preacher, you're in a chapel. You're not in next to the president. It was just logic.

It was just an instant to me an instant pulling back of the curtain of what they were doing and the minute I saw that I was just crestfallen because I knew that it was all fake

that was the instant it was like a death and then I was angry again. And I said, well, you know, there is no hope. This is just ridiculous. This is no way. This is not real. I've wasted three months of my life researching fakeness.

I really felt like I'd been had. How much time are you spending online now? Well, now that the coronavirus lockdown has, you know, I'm not working, I'm spending quite a bit of time. I probably spend watching what's going on now, probably about four hours a day. And do you ever worry that you could fall into something like QAnon again? Absolutely not. I am so cynical. I am so done.

I just don't believe anything anymore. Well, say more about that. I mean, I lost my job because of the COVID. I was vested for retirement this year. And I haven't worked. My kids haven't worked because we're all in hospitality. And I have tried to reach unemployment for three weeks. I got them on the phone today.

She spent an hour trying to register me for unemployment. And the computer went and let her. And she can't mail me a letter. She can't call me back. So I have to spend another three weeks trying to get them on the phone. In the meantime, my landlord gave me the three-day notice in the middle of a rent moratorium. I guess I'm so done. It's not there. There's no awakening. Yeah. I mean, I guess I I'm I'm remembering you

saying that when you found Q you were pretty cynical and thought you know the government was screwing you and things were unfair and you had a lot of time on your hands and I think I mean that's sort of what you're saying

your life is like now right yeah fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me no way sort of what you're saying your life is like now, right? Yeah. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. No way. Q is a lie. Our system is all set up to shoot towards the people in control.

But isn't that what Q is saying? He is saying that, and that's why I got sucked in. But remember, he's also saying that he talks to the president and that the intel he's getting is direct from the government. My thing is the source. Q's source is a lie. Therefore, anything he says or Q drops say are suspect and questionable. Even though you don't think Q is real, you're still allowing that some of what Q has said might be true.

Those things were true before I found Q. And those things are marketing tools for Q to grow his client base. Do you still believe in some sort of global cabal? It's not whether I believe it or not. It's true. QAnon as a movement continues to grow. And as it does, its message is being amplified by people with real political power, including President Trump. Although he's never explicitly acknowledged the conspiracy theory, he has retweeted profiles with the QAnon logo and QAnon messaging in their bios.

He's also met and taken an overall... Who has used his Twitter account to retweet or respond to QAnon messages or QAnon-related accounts dozens of times. We're in the, I guess we're in the opening acts of the Trump rally in Sunrise, Florida. Arena is filling up. There's still about two hours left to go before President Trump is slated to speak. And we are looking for QAnon people. Oh, I see one. There's one behind. You see a guy in a QAnon?

Is that a Q shirt? Excuse me. Do you have a second to chat? I noticed your shirt has Q on it. We're talking to people who are interested in Q here. I actually got this outside. Oh, you bought this outside? Yeah.

What does it say? The calm before the storm, the great awakening, justice. What's your hat say up there? QAnon. QAnon. Yeah, it's the great awakening. Can you explain what's on your shirt? Well, it stands for QAnon.

Yeah, Q. Awesome, love it. Yeah, it's kind of an alternative that's building up an audience. What it means is taking back what belongs to you from the government. Hi, ma'am. We're talking to people about QAnon. Have you heard of QAnon? Yes, I have. I believe in it. I don't think it's a conspiracy. I think that in 10, 20 years it'll be probably part of history classes. I mean, it'll probably be something kids are learning in middle school because of how it's changing history. Fred Parscale. Mahalo, the whole state of Florida.

So, Silicon Valley, they want to control what you see. And they are giving you a myth right now. They're acting like we are the ones showing an untruthful message. But they're actually doing the most untruthful thing you can do in America, which is shut off free speech. And the media is not doing their job. They think it's great because it fits their agenda. Everyone see what Google, Twitter, these companies are trying to do?

They want to suppress your vote in 2020. And what we need to do is we need to continue to fight back. And the way we fight back is get online ourselves, we get connected, sign up for emails we have, and ask your friends and neighbors to sign up to volunteer. Because their agenda is the president not to win in 2020. They want to be in charge. They get control back. The establishment.

They want the deep state back in control. Because when President Trump won in 2016, it wasn't the end of the battle. It was the beginningiter of truth. The CEO of YouTube, Her Majesty. Susan Wojcicki has decided that she is the arbiter of truth. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stands by decision to fact check Trump. You can't just take what you like, Mark Zuckerberg, and get rid of the stuff you don't like. So these are the people controlling what you're now allowed to think and say in America.

Monopolistic power over the public square. Taking content down off of Twitter, off of YouTube, that is the modern equivalent of book burning. All right, so Kevin, as you and I are talking today, in June 2020, a year into all of this, kind of a big question, but like, where is it things stand with the internet?

Well, right now we're in this really interesting moment. All these big social media platforms, they're getting more criticism than they ever have. They've had unchecked power to censor, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter virtually any form of communication between private citizens. With some of the loudest voices saying that they're exerting too much control over what appears on their platforms. It's likely we'll see this moment as a turning point in the way we live in this country, a sharp break with 250 years of law and custom.

And as they pull more things down and make more new rules... Obviously they have a political motivation for removing information. That act of control actually fuels this notion among certain corners of the internet... If anything, that actually makes me want to watch them even more. Because if there's something in there that the media doesn't want me to see, hell, I want to see it. That there is this secret, forbidden knowledge out there. I want to know what it is that's so damning to the official narrative that they want to hide it from me.

At the exact same time... The World Wide Web is now more connected than ever before. Tens of millions of people suddenly forced to stay in and log in. They have never been more popular. Social media usage has ramped up significantly during the lockdown. This is unprecedented that we're seeing this kind of demand. Twitter just reported that its usage has grown 23% since last year. Facebook has said that in some of the countries that were hit hardest by the coronavirus, the time that people are spending on its apps

has increased by as much as 70%. And so many people are watching so much YouTube. The massive migration online is putting our internet infrastructure to the test. People are asking, will all of this break the internet? That the company actually had to lower the quality of its videos to keep the internet from overloading. YouTube wouldn't tell me exactly how much watch time has jumped up, Watch time has jumped up, but one data firm estimated that 15% of all traffic on the internet right now is coming from people watching YouTube videos.

That's almost double what it was last year. Testing, testing. Testing. How are you? I'm Kevin. Hi, I'm Daniel. Can I ask you a question? You tell me honestly. How much YouTube would you say you guys watch a day?

Too much. All of my time, every single fucking day. Too much. It's like, oh, I got so much to do, and then at 3 a.m. I'm like, huh, look at that. And then I don't stop. I'm basically always doing it. If I'm out on a walk, I'm using my data to watch YouTube.

And just looking forward to what this all means... What do you like about your favorite YouTubers? Well, they just really inspire me. Like, they give me more ideas of what I should do, because when I get older, I want to at least have a YouTube channel. In survey after survey over the last few years, when young people

around the world are asked what they want to do with their lives honestly my main goal was i would love to be a youtuber like that was the the goal they respond that they want to be online influencers i was stuck in a world where i felt so creative all the time in school but i didn't know how i could use that everybody was telling me oh you have to be a doctor oh you have to do this there was this one survey where they gave kids a bunch of options. Like, do you want to be a scientist or a lawyer or an astronaut? And the kids basically said overwhelmingly, like, no, I want to be famous on social media. At first I did it for fun, but like starting to grow older, you can think like actually you can turn it into a career and you meet awesome people from it.

Last year, I actually went to go talk to some of those aspiring online influencers at this event called VidCon. So why do you guys come to VidCon? Mostly to collab with my friends and meet everyone. I just want to meet all my friends that are on the internet that I haven't been able to before. Which is the biggest convention of social media influencers in the world. Why are you guys here?

My goal is to boost my watch time, so I would just kind of like to learn some of the trends and kind of how to navigate the algorithm a little better. I'm here to collab. I'm also here to talk to companies. Next year, I don't want to pay to go to VidCon. I want to get invited. And all these influencers show up. Oh, we got screaming fans over here.

In Southern California. People are lining up to take selfies. With their entourages and they do these meet and greets with their fans and they get courted by agents and all these huge brands. I'm here at the YouTube party, a bunch of people hanging out. And then they go off to these like lavish private parties. There must be a thousand people in here. And it's kind of a big celebration of this multi-billion

dollar industry that a ton of people are clamoring to break into. And increasingly where they told me they were trying to break in and get noticed. YouTube is slowly but surely dying. The creators are getting

worse, I guess. I feel like they're just trying too hard to be like everyone else and not being themselves. It wasn't YouTube. Are there more TikTokers or YouTubers here? TikTokers. TikTok is literally taking over VidCon. It was TikTok. Why are you so obsessed with me?

I don't even know how they did it. Boy, I wanna know Lying that you're sexing me It's full of like silly lip syncs and memes. DNA test turns out I'm a hundred plus Irish British Mexican

Indian A TikToker Got the horses in the back People dancing to pop songs, lots of animals. Lots of cats. It's just fun. Which is exactly how it was designed to feel. And what do you mean by that?

So unlike a lot of American social media companies, which started off as basically open platforms and have only recently started to implement more rules and restrictions, owned by this Chinese company, ByteDance, which has been way more heavy-handed in curating and controlling what appears on its app. Whether that's meant like hiding controversial political speech or more subtle things like making sure that the people whose posts show up on the main feed look happy and beautiful. And it seems like what they're really trying to do is to create the most entertaining, light, glossy version of reality that they can. Does anyone want to be in my TikTok? TikTok is definitely the place to build an audience right now. It's so open and creative. As of right now, TikTok is the app to be on.

right now. It's so open and creative. As of right now, TikTok is the app to be on. And it's working. People love TikTok. They've downloaded it something like 1.5 billion times. TikTok is very easy to get followers. It's the fastest growing app in the world. I got thousands of views.

Just as a point of context, the number one star on TikTok is a 16 year old girl who went from 0 to 60 million followers in a year. And we were able to get a viral hit just because people liked the video and it was seen. Which took PewDiePie on YouTube eight years. Like how many hours a day do you think you spend on TikTok? Too much.

Too much. Honestly. Way too much. If I checked your phone, would it be like six hours? Yeah. Around there. Maybe more. Like 10 hours? 10 it be like six hours? Yeah, around there. Maybe more. Like 10 hours? 10 hours a day on TikTok?

Yeah. And of course, a lot of what's fueling TikTok's success is an incredibly sophisticated algorithm. Just like the ones that run YouTube and Facebook and all the other big social media platforms, TikTok's algorithm is constantly learning from people what they want to see and what will capture and keep their attention. And actually, ByteDance, this Chinese tech company, it doesn't even really see TikTok or any of the other apps it owns as its primary product. Because ByteDance has this huge advanced artificial intelligence lab, one of the biggest in the world. And its goal, way beyond just making a fun social media app, is to become the world leader in the development of superpowered AI. Okay, Kevin. So in our attempts to better understand what the internet is doing to us,

here's where it sounds like we're landing. First, we know that the internet is largely being run by these sophisticated artificial intelligences that have tapped into our base impulses are like deepest desires you know whether we would admit that or not and they've used that information to show us a picture of reality that is hyperbolic and polarizing and entertaining and essentially distorted. Right. And now there are even more of these algorithms than ever before, and they are getting even smarter. And they're doing that in part because the technology is just getting better,

but it's also because we are giving them exactly what they are programmed to want, which is more of our attention. Right. And so in the end, what we have is a situation where the AIs keep showing us this distorted reality. And then we keep paying attention to that. And in doing so, we are telling them that we would like to see more of this distorted reality and essentially, we're living inside of this loop that's getting faster and faster and showing us a world that is getting more

and more and more distorted. Right. more and more and more distorted. Right. And the more and more time we spend online, the more this distorted vision of the world actually becomes our reality. It spans the globe like a superhighway. It is called Internet.

The Internet gave us a whole world of exciting new possibilities. So I guess this is a story of how it changed our lives. Rabbit Hole was made by Julia Longoria, Sundu Nyanasambandhan, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Doerr, Brad Fisher, Dan Powell, Kevin Roos, and

me, Andy Mills. Music by Peter Lalish, Dan Powell, and Nate Henricks. Special thanks to Charlie Wurzel, Mike Binwa, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Nora Keller,

Allie Watkins, Nina Potok, Jasmine Aguilera, Topher And Lisa Tobin and Sam Dolnick. Thank you.