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Feb. 17, 2022 - Conspirituality
01:47:34
91: We Need to Talk About Stephanie

When Stephanie Sibbio, owner of Glowing Mama Fitness in Toronto, livestreamed herself harassing workers in her local health food store over COVID policy, the world was introduced to a now-familiar archetype: the petulant anti-masker who cares as little about science as she does about others. Sibbio has since developed this role with gusto, becoming a minor celebrity in the Canadian antivax movement. Recently, she threw her support behind the Occupation of Ottawa.But everyone comes from somewhere: a family, a network, a circle. Beneath a persona hardened by the social media spectacle, there’s a person to be known, remembered, and perhaps welcomed back. Today Matthew sits down with four friends who have known and loved Stephanie since junior high school. They share stories of the bonds they nurtured growing up, and how quickly and violently antivax ideology and social media smashed their circle. An honest and transparent discussion about the emotional and social costs of conspirituality. Show NotesGlowing Mama Anti-Masker. Toronto Influencer Socially Toilets in…The Unbearable Feelings of the Anti-Masker Oppression Fantasies of White Anti-Vax Moms That Time When I Was in a Cult and Got a Loving Letter from a Friend -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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If you're a fan of workplace comedies like The Office or satire like The Onion, then I have a podcast that I know you'll love.
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Mega is an improvised satire from the staff of a fictional megachurch.
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It's called Mega.
Mega is an improvised satire from the staff of a fictional megachurch.
That's the premise.
Each week, the hosts, Holly Laurent and Greg Hess, are joined by guests, people like Cecily Strong or Jen Hatmaker.
To portray characters inside the colorful world of Twin Hills Community Church, which they describe as a mega church with a tiny family feel.
The result is a sharp-witted and hilarious look into the world of commercialized religion using humor to cope with the frightening amount of power that church and religion have.
So I very much recommend you checking out Mega's episodes like the one with Saturday Night Live, Cecily Strong playing Cece String, a hilarious character who's fresh out of jail, and also comedian Jason Mantzoukas.
You may find yourself dying of laughter and perhaps inspired to take an improv class yourself.
Mega is able to keep you laughing as you think and reflect about the world we live in.
You can find MEGA on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Hello dear Conspirituality Podcast listeners and welcome to a special episode this week.
It's Matthew here piloting and I'm joined by some special guests that I'll introduce in a moment.
You can follow us on Twitter, sometimes on Facebook and more often on Instagram and you can support us on Patreon where subscribers get access to our weekly bonus episodes.
So, here we go.
One of the most tender issues we point to in this project is the fact that when a person is ensnared by conspirituality, QAnon, or conspiracy theories in general, they leave a trail of intimate social wreckage behind them.
But it's rare that we have the opportunity to speak at any length with the friends, partners, the family members who are left wondering what happened and what will happen to their loved one.
Now, in episode 65, we did get to speak with QAnon survivor Jitarth Jadea in conversation with cult recovery expert Rachel Bernstein.
Jadea was able to describe in detail how he became indoctrinated, but also how he recruited his own father and how he is now trying to welcome his father back to reality.
And then way back in episode 19, I spoke with Mike Rains, who is one of the moderators, along with Jadea, in fact, of the QAnon Casualties subreddit.
And at the time I spoke with him, that subreddit had about 60,000 members, and now, as of today, it has 228,000 members.
Now, today we go deeper with this theme because of the generosity and care of a group of friends who have come forward to discuss what happened to one of their own.
I'm joined today by Frankie, Rosa, Jean, and Grace.
Hello to all of you.
Hi, Matthew.
Thanks for having us on.
Hi, Matthew.
Thank you for having us.
Hi, Matthew.
Hi, Matthew.
Well, hello to all of you, and thanks for taking the time.
The first thing that I'll say is that the names you just gave, the names that I gave, are pseudonyms, which you have all chosen for privacy reasons.
I can verify for the listeners that we don't have any interlopers, but the person we'll be trying to understand today is not an anonymous figure.
She has made herself very much a celebrity of the Canadian anti-lockdown and anti-vax movements, and she's been the citizen of a lot of, sorry, she's been the focus of a lot of citizen journalism, and I've written a few articles about her conspirituality logic as well, which I'll link to in the notes.
Her name is Stephanie Sibio.
She lives here in my hometown of Toronto.
It's our hometown.
We all live here.
And she's had a pre and postnatal yoga and fitness business for many years.
I believe I've seen her around at yoga events like years ago, but I only really started to know her when she made an anti-masking nuisance of herself last spring at the Sweet Potato Health Food Store in the West downtown neighborhood called The Junction.
An outlet called BlogTO re-upped an IG live stream that she took of herself barging into the store and demanding to be sold menstrual products while not wearing a mask.
Now after that bit of infamy, videographer Morgan Yu interviewed her outside a City Hall vaccination clinic.
She was weeping about what we've called reverse contingent anxiety or the false belief that being around a vaccinated person would make her infertile.
And she also mentioned the possibility that it would make her daughter infertile.
Her daughter is very young.
Since then, Sibio has continued recently participating in a protest group that anti-masked their way through a big downtown shopping mall.
And it's notable that these protests at the Eaton Center have started to involve some real physical violence, pushing and shoving of security guards and so on.
So the milieu that Sibio is moving through is escalating.
So, where I'd like to start, everyone, is just with the acknowledgement that this is a vulnerable thing to do for all of you, but also in relation to this friend of yours, should she hear this podcast or hear about it.
We're going to be talking about difficult and perhaps shameful behavior in a highly charged political atmosphere that ensnares families and shreds communities.
I wanted to ask that if you imagined Stephanie listening to this, what would you want her to know up front about why you're speaking today and what your hopes are?
And I'm just going to open the floor and you can give your name as you begin.
So my name is Frankie and I actually, a part of me hopes that Steph does listen to this and I do want to say that Steph If you are listening, I'm really sorry that things turned out this way, and I want you to know that our history will always mean something to me.
I'll go.
I'm Jean, and yeah, I guess the first thing I wanted to say was just that I know that she truly believes that she is doing the right thing, and she's doing what she's doing because she believes
that she just believes that this is what she has to do and so I know she's not doing it out of any like ill intent but I just really hope that she can somehow get some help and that she can sort of come out on the other side and start to see where she is misinformed and start to sort of come back to see what is actually going on.
And I hope she can have a successful and happy life ahead of her.
I really do wish her the best and yeah, I just hope that she can come out on the other side.
I'm Grace and I think I would just, if Steph is listening, I think I would like her To do just that and listen and I hope that she's able to hear another side to what has happened.
This is an opportunity for us to share our uninterrupted version of what happened to us and I hope that she knows we come here today with good intentions and with hope that
If we don't reach her, perhaps we reach somebody who's falling down the same path she was, or perhaps somebody who's following her for public health advice, essentially.
It's an opportunity for her to hear another perspective.
This is Rosa speaking, and I think I don't have any kind of sense of a belief that any of what we'll say will change her mind about anything that she believes.
I've seen so many people have conversations with her over the last couple years and I see that they go nowhere.
So I don't have any false sense that she's going to listen to this and be changed in any way.
But I kind of agree with Grace that it's not so much about her
her hearing this as it is about just kind of speaking yeah our side of what we've experienced and and getting through to others who you know might potentially have a little more capacity to change their mind or or see with a little more clarity that you know that things aren't black and white and there is nuance to situations.
Well, thank you, everyone.
I'm gonna start with a question to Frankie, which is that after I wrote about Stephanie in a few columns, it was you who reached out by email and you wrote that Stephanie was part of my close friend group since we were 14.
And when you wrote you said I'm 34 now.
Myself and seven other women have watched her lose her mind and become basically radicalized over the past year.
She's cut off all family and friends and is spiraling.
So, first of all, thank you for reaching out and helping to convene this panel.
I'm going to ask this question of everyone else in turn, but to start with you, Frankie, how did you first meet Stephanie and what did you love most about her through the years?
Well, it's funny like thinking thinking back is like actually brings back a lot of like happiness and like it's just I like laugh when I think about it.
It's we first met actually in gym class in grade nine and I never wanted to swim.
I think at one point she didn't swim and we were like in the bleachers talking and And by Halloween of that year, she walked over to my house and she brought a mix CD.
So that kind of ages me.
And we sat listening to this mix CD.
And I remember, like, it was a bunch of songs that I still love to this day.
And like, for some reason, a funny Simpsons song.
I don't know.
Anyway, either way, it was the greatest night ever.
We basically became like sisters from that point.
And, you know, she was just honestly the best.
We would do spontaneous road trips.
There was a time where, you know, we just decided like Rose and a bunch of our friends were in Montreal and we just decided, you know what, let's take a car and let's drive all night and show up at this party that everyone's at.
And we did.
And then the next morning we like got tattoos together for no reason.
You know, they're not great tattoos, but whatever.
It was fun.
And she was just such a light in my life.
She was like my sister.
We connected emotionally.
Our family is the same culture and our family like her family is like family to me.
I still love them and you know she's just this really does feel like like a breakup and I really appreciate your work, Matthew, because of the compassion you chose in writing about her, and it really brought a lot of compassion out of me for something that I thought I had none left, to be honest.
Yeah, thanks Frankie.
I kind of want to hear the CD.
Oh yeah, I bet you Grace could remember a few of the songs.
Rosa, same question?
So Steph and I also met in grade 9 and my first memory of her, I don't have a memory of like the first time we connected or met, but the first memory I have is Finishing school in grade nine.
I lived about a block from the high school and we walked back to my house because I was using at that point in time an iron, like an iron that you iron clothes with to do my hair.
And so I said I could do that for her.
And so we had this bonding moment of her like head flipped over on my bed and me using an iron to iron out her hair.
And, um, I even remember she was wearing this red vest.
Everyone knows the red vest because she used to wear this red vest for like years.
Anyway, that's my first memory of her.
And yeah, we were very much like family as well.
And I think my favorite thing about her was her vibrancy.
She was just like a fun, loving person when she was at her best.
We just had a lot of fun together.
We, you know, used to do things like go rollerblading and I used to love to dance with her and just joke around.
And she's one of those friends that I like would snuggle into and, you know, just very, very family-like.
She was never the friend that you'd go to for the hard stuff, but she was someone who you'd have a good time with.
How about you, Grace?
I actually first met Stephanie in grade seven.
We're 12, 13.
Like Rosa said, I don't actually remember our first bonding moment.
However, there was this one day in grade eight when I knew this was this was going to be my friend for life because she and I had decided we have to get fit.
Let's go and rent the tie bow.
VHS from Blockbuster.
I don't want to sound like we're 100.
I know!
Talk about aging us!
We went to Blockbuster to get a VHS and went back to her house to do Ty Bow and we were going to get so fit and we put in the VHS.
We were in her living room.
We put on exercise clothes.
And then we didn't push play.
Instead, we decided that we should bake a cake.
And we went and got Duncan Hines' cake mix and spent the afternoon in her kitchen baking this chocolate cake and then eating it.
And I was like, yeah, this will be my friend for life.
She knows what's really important.
And like the other women have said, we were family.
We were super close.
Super close with my family.
I was super close with hers.
I still love her family very much.
So yeah, sort of like Frankie said, this does feel very much like a breakup.
Jean, what do you remember about meeting Stephanie and what did you love most about her?
So I also first met Steph in grade 7 as well.
We weren't really friends probably until grade 9 or 10.
And I really became friends with her through our really close-knit group of friends that we formed in around probably grade 9 or 10.
For me, Steph and I weren't always as close on like a one-on-one level but similar to what All the other ladies have said she just was a super fun person to be around.
She was just like very vibrant, always up for a fun time.
And when I was in university, Frankie, Steph and I were among the group of people who were still, we stayed in Toronto for university, whereas most of our friends left the city.
So we kind of bonded, we had a little t-dot crew together.
And yeah, so that was probably when I kind of became closer with her.
And it was really just, we were always just having fun together.
We'd hung out at her family house a lot, having fun nights together.
And then when I eventually did move to Montreal for a few years, she would come and visit often.
Frankie would come visit me often and it was the same like I had some new friends in my new city and they were always excited when Steph was in town because Steph would be like up for a party time and like everyone got along with her and yeah she was just kind of a fun Joyful person to be around.
You know, as I mentioned, the first time I became aware of Stephanie Sibio was in this blog TO article, which carried some of the live stream of her harassing the staff at Sweet Potato.
And I'm really glad that we started with these memories, actually, because these memories are not what the public first saw of your friend.
So I've got a bit of what that sounded like here.
Here I fucking go.
Let's go.
Good old Sweet Potato where I used to get all my organic groceries, spend all my money.
Unfortunately, they have decided They don't want to honor my human rights anymore.
Hi.
Hi there.
How are you?
I'm great.
How are you?
Good.
Um, so just let me know.
Yeah.
Um, our policy to our store is actually you need to be wearing your mask at all times.
Yeah, that actually goes against the bylaw and my human rights.
Okay, so, I mean, it didn't go against the bylaw, it didn't go against her human rights, but by the time the public is hearing this, I'm sure you all are quite aware of Where it's coming from and where she's going with it.
So you have some preparation for this news article dropping.
What was the first indication that you had that something was going south?
Am I correct that you were all on a sort of a communication group or a WhatsApp group together and you were in close contact?
Yeah, so we had our WhatsApp group that basically was 24-7 and not in a way that was like something that took over our lives, but it was just kind of like we because we all live in different cities.
At one point, you know, it was just like a comforting thing.
And then the first time that We, this really became an issue because COVID, the way it crept in, I'm sure crept in the way for everyone where it was kind of like, Oh, this is actually a thing.
This is actually something we should be scared of or pay attention to now.
And then the first, uh, instance I remember thinking, wow, stuff is really like distancing herself as she said something like, Oh, I'm more scared of, uh, car, like car accident, or I'm more scared of getting shot than, uh, and COVID.
And it was at a point where, and in the way that she went about saying it, that it was just kind of like a line had been drawn and it was really quickly after that that the group fell apart.
Did that just come out of the blue?
It was this weird kind of time where In very, very early, kind of pre-COVID where there was a lot of talk about it, but that wasn't the full focus yet, that she was starting to have conversations or kind of arguments with other of our friends about vaccines in general.
And she was starting to get like really vocal about that before we even talked, before there was even an idea that COVID would be what it was and that there would even be a vaccine or anything like that.
At the time I was actually in India, so I was not getting messages often.
And like, like Frankie said, the, the group was very active.
So I'd get like internet for one minute a day.
And then I didn't have like 500 messages in the group and be like, Oh my God, what the hell is going on?
But, um, so there was this kind of this conversation about vaccines that was coming to the surface and it was kind of something that was bubbling for a while.
And it really.
In I want to say February, March 2020, that was when the vaccine conversation kind of became an argument.
And at the same time, COVID was becoming something to really worry about.
What was at stake?
I understand that her daughter is perhaps four or five years old now.
She's three and a half.
She's three and a half, so she's younger, so this is at the point where she's considering some of the scheduled vaccinations for her own daughter.
Is that part of what's happening?
Actually, Steph was pretty adamant about not vaccinating her daughter Since she was pregnant.
And there had been a few conversations within our group around that.
A few of our friends had, like, shared some concern and had asked some questions of, why is that that you're not considering vaccinating her?
And really, like, you don't even want to make sure she has, you know, measles, mumps, rubella or, you know, those kinds of things.
And she didn't at that point, I don't think she really knew Why she wasn't going to vaccinate.
She just knew she wasn't going to.
And that there must be something wrong with them because they're not natural.
And I think there's an emotional tone that maybe you can pick up on here that we were walking on eggshells around her because we really did like respect the fact that she had a very different point of view than all of us.
And we respected the fact that it came from a place of concern.
For her, uh, child.
And that is something that we know that is, we have no place telling her what to do with her child.
And so I know there was, uh, cause we do an annual potluck every day during the holidays.
Oh, not every day.
Every year.
Sorry.
And, um, at this potluck, I remember one of our other friends really calmly broaching the situation.
And then I think myself and Gene were sitting on the couch and then we just slowly got up from the couch and backed away to the kitchen.
Not because we're scared, but because I think all of us on some level, unconsciously or not, could sense that this really had the potential to explode this beautiful family that we had built.
Yes, and I think it's very important to note too that Steph, for as much as we loved her, wasn't necessarily always the easiest or the most accepting of criticism or critique.
So, Like Frankie said, we did often walk on eggshells and we did often bite our tongue.
When I would maybe feel comfortable to share an opinion with any of the other women and know that it would be heard and well received and know that it was well intentioned, I didn't have that security with Steph.
So there were Many instances over many years that I just decided I don't want to say anything here because it might mean the end of our friendship and I'm not ready for it to be the end of our friendship so I'll just zip it, bite my tongue, love her anyway.
Yeah.
And there was a lot of this Oh well that's our friend and we love her anyway kind of thing.
Do you guys agree?
Yeah and I just wanted to also add um because I do specifically remember that conversation at the potluck and um I think Probably around that time was when she did sort of start diving into her reading about why she didn't want to vaccinate because I remember sort of just casually saying, like, what is your reasoning for not vaccinating?
And she said, you know, I've done so much research and I've done all the research that I really need to do and it's really informed my decision.
And I think at that time, too, vaccines were just such a different conversation because she was sort of saying, well, this is my personal choice.
This is what I choose to do with my child, but I would never try and influence anyone else's decision.
And I'm not trying to sway any of your decisions.
And it's just not something I really want to even discuss within the group because I think See it as sort of a personal decision.
It's also her personal parenting decision, which of course none of us wanted to try and influence or have any, um, try and have any say in.
But obviously now the conversation around vaccines is completely different.
And, um, it was interesting that we really were having that conversation right before COVID actually.
Grace, I wanted to come back to something that you said about how, you know, you had noticed over the years, and the listeners should know that we're doing this in a video conference and I can see everybody nodding along as you describe this, that it could be difficult for your friend to take feedback or criticism or that it was difficult to share Perhaps feelings or opinions with her and be confident that it wouldn't cause some sort of fracture.
What were the issues, if you're able to share, that would be difficult to bring up and did any of them predict anything like this?
Let's just start with food.
So I share, you know, I share I would say a passion and like an understanding of how food is medicine and how healthy eating is important.
I have my whole life.
And Steph has taken this as she's decided that food is like the reason why everyone's sick.
And I'm not saying that she's 100% wrong.
I'm not here to debate that.
I'm saying she decided at some point that every single mood she had, every single bad thing that happened to her or her family was because they ate pasta or bread or something inorganic that week, that night, that it was all directly related.
And while I can see the body connection, it became something that you couldn't question her on that.
You couldn't say, well, maybe it really bothered you that fight that you had with your mom a couple days ago.
Like, why don't we talk about that stuff?
Or some disagreement you got with your brother.
Like, that must have really been horrible.
Nope it was because I ate too much over the holiday and it was all bad and like I'm saying this with love I'm sorry it's a and um and honestly you couldn't argue with her and and I think this there was an explosive side where she was just very easily triggered by when she decided something was
Yes, and I think also we watched her fight and dismiss people from her life for approaching her and that's for me why I was always, to be honest, I was just too afraid And I loved her too much like family and I am not a confrontational person.
Confrontation makes me very uncomfortable so that's why I said I often would just bite my tongue because we had seen over the years other groups of friends of hers maybe some old co-workers of hers approach her and share their opinions or feelings and dislike of maybe some of her actions and
She would, you know, lose it and cut them out of her life and I wasn't ready to be cut out of her life and, you know, inevitably that is what happened the minute we decided to say I don't agree with you.
Adding to that, when you asked Matthew about, you know, things that you would bite your tongue about, for me when I think of Areas where I would bite my tongue or try to be really, really careful about how I worded things was with those situations where I was seeing her repeat these same conflicts in her life in different scenarios and with different people.
And telling the stories and there was never any room for nuance in okay like I see how you were hurt by that but also I see how they could could have been hurt by that as well.
She was never able to receive that kind of information it was always I'm right and they're wrong and there's no There's no room for anything in between.
And so that was an area where, you know, I would try my best.
I, I tried very much to be honest with her in general.
Um, cause that's what I try to do in general as a person, but she was someone who was very hard to do that with.
And at one point it would just be like, okay, I'm going to give up because this isn't going to get through to her.
And like Grace said, you know, I love her and that's just the way she is and that's, you know, I accept her as she is knowing that I really disagree with her on a lot of things.
It sounds like the friendship thing that you would do to try to mediate a dispute or to share with a friend that, oh, well, maybe there's another perspective, that that was actually quite a threatening thing, that however her relationships were aligned, they really had to be on or off, that you had to be with her or you weren't.
And she'd let you know when you were going to cross that line.
So this was familiar to you, it seems.
It's hard for me to talk about this and it makes me emotional and actually a lot of the clips and her talking I don't listen to because it really triggers an emotional response for me.
It was interesting because just before the pandemic, Steph and I got into a personal fight.
And it was about something that was connected to a struggle that I've been going through for years.
And I felt that she wasn't sensitive to it.
And I normally would be like, okay, I'm just going to take the high road, which to me at the time meant not saying how I felt.
But then I thought, you know what, this is important enough in my life that I need her to know that what she did hurt me.
And so I told her and it is, and it, Immediately was like, well, I need to protect, I need to protect myself.
And you did this and you did that.
And it spiraled into me thinking, well, she immediately was like, deny, defend, it's your fault.
And, um, and then, so it wasn't even that it was the vaccines or COVID or any of her speaking out.
It's like, before this all happened, this kind of, this seed in her started where she's just decided that like, if, if you call her out on anything, she's going to be like, well, this is what's wrong with you.
And I'm done.
You know, what I didn't think that I was going to learn in this conversation was that, I mean, I think that you're describing, uh, internal group dynamics that are going to be quite familiar to That, you know, within any group of, you know, seven to ten friends that have known each other for a long time, there's going to be somebody who
Everybody either knows that they have to walk gently around, or somebody who needs extra care, or somebody who is accepted for certain exuberant, gregarious gifts, but you also know that they can fly off the handle, and you just sort of deal with it.
And I can understand that.
What I didn't get was that a political wedge issue could take a characteristic like that and amplify it in a catastrophic way.
And I'm wondering if that's part of the story that will be resonant to the listeners as well, that if they've lost a family member or if somebody has been sucked into conspirituality, that some previous tension within the relationship was actually just exploited, really.
I think you've really hit the nail on the head in a big way with that kind of description.
And what I've always kind of said is that Steph's most predominant trait is her stubbornness.
And what I find very interesting about this whole situation and this type of situation where someone gets pulled into this world and spirals and can't see their way through it is like the personality traits really Related to who gets sucked in and it's yeah what's been amazing to witness is just this inability to change your mind in any way regardless of the new information that is provided to you.
So that's exactly it.
It was like there were these tendencies and traits and then this situation came and it just lit everything on fire.
It was like, it was like waiting to happen and it was just kind of like the worst parts of who she was got amplified and all the other beautiful parts just kind of dissipated.
Well and I also think that had she kind of Maybe it would have had to been like she had a different personality type or something, but like if she had kind of come to the group and said, you know, as things are sort of amping up with the pandemic and seems like there's a vaccine rolling out, if she had sort of approached it in the sense of, you know, I'm just really anxious about vaccines and I'm really mistrusting
Pharmaceutical companies and I'm just scared to try something that maybe hasn't been around for so long and I don't trust the government and sort of just came from an angle of I'm feeling really anxious and I don't really know what to do about these feelings and I'm just too scared to take the vaccine.
I think it would have been a different type of discussion and probably a totally different vibe among the group.
But instead it was sort of just taking that fear and then attaching it to some sort of explanation that is sort of rationalizing your fear through like an irrational explanation and then sort of escalating those things.
So it was like it started with not trusting the vaccine.
And then I think a big turning point was when that Plandemic documentary came out.
Then that was supposed to be compelling enough that like, how could we all not watch this Plandemic documentary and not be, you know, convinced by this?
And then started to hear the the things about comparing it to the holocaust and like it really just kept escalating in this like trying to rationalize those anxieties rather than just saying I'm scared of this you know.
I wanted to add to that she what Jean is talking about is that she lost her ability to be vulnerable with us
And she never recognized that that was ever the case that she was not vulnerable with us and instead chose this extreme armor of of anger and and still coming because I still have had messages from her up until late last summer of her messaging me saying that you know she's really worried for us and you know coming at it from sending me videos of people that she thinks
I'll watch and just be like, oh yes, I totally agree with that.
So I know that she thinks she's coming at this from a vulnerable way, but like Jean said, she never allowed for the love that we had for each other to be a part of the conversation at any point.
And she just goes online and rewrites history.
every time she speaks about us.
So it's just, yeah.
You know, I'm going to ask you how you tried to engage or interact, but I just want to reflect on the fact that you're describing how you would have received a confession, really.
You know, I'm scared about this situation.
I'm scared about this vaccine.
And I can really feel just from speaking to you all for just a few minutes now that that WhatsApp group just would have been showered with you know, love and concern.
And, you know, I understand and we're living in a difficult time.
And yeah, it's hard to find good information.
But I'm wondering whether she had tested the waters with you in February with her convictions about vaccination.
And she had found that she didn't have any friends in the group who would take her side.
And I'm wondering whether that was influential in how she then pursued the rest of the campaign.
Was the window for showing vulnerability closed at a certain point, do you think?
There were two things that came up when you said that.
I think the window for vulnerability had already closed quite a while before.
And I also remember, you named it exactly.
She felt like it was everyone against her.
We had very differing views.
We weren't going to see her side.
She pretty much wrote us all a breakup email that was saying, you know, I love you all, but I need to distance myself from you all because we just don't see eye to eye.
So there was a clear moment of nobody's on my side, you guys aren't seeing what I'm saying, so I am letting you go.
I think maybe Grace spoke about Escalation or it maybe it was Frankie who said who used the phrase that it just set on fire and you also said that you don't like listening to the clips.
So maybe you can you can plug your ears because I do want to just play one more from the journalism of Morgan you.
Who catches her outside of City Hall.
And this is from May of 2021.
The first one was from March.
So there's a real escalation that we can hear.
Do you think that adults have a choice in kids' health?
Adults have a choice, absolutely.
But what sets this particular injection apart is that someone getting that shot can affect my health.
I'm bleeding between my period right now because there are people around me who are taking this shot.
So what if I can't have another baby because of your decision to inject?
What if my daughter can't have a baby because someone else decided that they want to inject themselves?
Her grandparents decided.
They're, you know, one foot in the grave.
And they decide they want to vaccinate themselves.
And they still want the right to hug their grandchild?
Why can't I protect my daughter now?
They're going to be a long time gone when my daughter comes to the point where she has to have babies and she has to potentially not be able to do that.
We are sterilizing an entire generation of people.
Because whether you get the vaccine or not, you're going to be affected by this.
There are people miscarrying.
There are people whose babies are dying from breastfeeding their children after being exposed to someone who's had this injection.
It is not a vaccine.
It is an experimental gene therapy drug that is being pushed as a vaccine because people have a religious belief in the word vaccine.
I have to just really apologize because that was extremely uncomfortable to listen to.
So forgive me for that, but I do want the listeners to understand, also from your point of view, what you're hearing and how it sounds.
Of course, and I just want to say too, that All of the data points that she just listed are absolutely false.
There's nothing true about anything that she just said.
I have a question about this very strong concern for her health and for her daughter's health, and whether or not that tracks with any previous orientations towards safety that you'd seen from her.
So let me start with that.
Does that ring any bell, this extraordinary concern for her health and her daughter's health?
That clip, I've never actually listened to it.
I'd seen, I watch her clips on mute a lot and I think, um, so I do this because I try not to get emotionally triggered and I really want to, I really want to make clear that
Steph really she really believes this and I'm in a weird sense proud of how passionate she is and what she's doing in a sense okay I understand how that no I'm not proud of her let's make that clear I'm proud of the passion because let's say sorry Rosa like let's say this stuff was true okay Yes, let's take to the streets.
This is true.
If this vaccine could make everyone infertile and we'd all die off in a couple generations, let's take to the streets.
Absolutely.
Go ahead.
This is not true.
She's standing there, screaming, I'm scared.
I'm anxious.
Nobody will talk to me.
I've lost my family.
I've lost all my friends.
I've had relationships my entire life, 35 years, gone.
I'm sad.
No one will talk to me.
Well, and just to your point of, like, I do feel empathy for her in the sense that, like, she seriously believes all of these things and is in serious distress in that moment.
Like, she is not putting on a show.
Like, she does believe that all of these things are true, which Would be terrifying if that's, if you believe that that was the reality.
So it is difficult to listen to in that sense where it's like she genuinely thinks that this is, that all of these people are going to be made infertile because simply being around someone who's vaccinated.
So I think that's the scary thing.
Is that she really, really does believe.
That's a very important point because I think it gets to a question that I think many people in the public would have viewing a clip like that, which is, is this somebody who is performative?
Is this an overly dramatic person?
Is this somebody who is seeking attention?
But it sounds like you feel that she really believes that these are real tears and real distress.
I think all of those things are true.
She's someone in real distress, crying for help.
She's also seeking attention in a big way.
Yeah, and she's terrified and it's very sad to listen to that because it's, you know, it's a person pleading and it's also a person saying things that make absolutely no sense, you know?
So it's a really, Challenging thing to listen to, but you know, there is a very big performative element to all of this.
The attention is absolutely a huge driving factor because this is her whole world now.
She is speaking to her phone, you know, to a reflection of herself and just seeing the likes and the views and all of that.
And that is a huge driving factor in this fight.
Thank you, Rosa, and I just wanted to come back to what you said, Frankie, about being proud of her, and I think you walked it back a little bit, and I think you wanted to clarify, but one of the things that I hear in it is that If the cause was correct, this is somebody that you would want to have on your side.
This is the friend, the comrade that you would want during the revolution.
And that her ability to stand in public And say extraordinary things that sound like speaking truth to power is really admirable and is actually something that you loved about her.
And that, you know, the passion of which you can recognize and you can remember.
I understand what Frankie meant.
I know you're not actually proud of her speaking about vaccine shedding, but our group of women have been very proactive in many protests throughout the years, and Steph never showed up.
Our group of women are at the Women's Day March, the Black Lives Matter marches, the marches for teachers striking.
All the time.
Steph's not there.
It wasn't a priority for her to show up to those things.
I don't know that well she's never been political she would always tell us she's not political if it wasn't for us especially in her early 20s if it wasn't for us like reading the news and telling her about stuff she wouldn't know what was going on in the world because she just doesn't have the time even to this day she'll she'll say she's not political and she says that Now!
Like, you know, as of, like, last week, she'll say that on her Instagram Live.
I'm not political, but those leftists are, you know, I don't know.
Which, yeah, and I just want to say, just to round out this point, is that I think the biggest harm that's happened of her becoming a somewhat public person is that she's made the conversation impossible.
She's made it so that we can't give an inch.
We can't say anything other than, we support the vaccines.
We support this.
We support that.
Because she's made it impossible for us to come to the middle.
Because she's not going to meet us in the middle.
Yeah, in other words, you expressing some sort of understanding for her concerns or her anxieties might be seen as you ceding some kind of principle that you were being recruited or that then you could be supportive.
I was wondering, too, about the fact that since so much of her, and this is not just true of Stephanie, but of many celebrities in this movement, that the claim that
They are personally and bodily being negatively impacted is really a, it's a very strong claim and it's a claim that your friends would have to endorse in order for you to feel like you were sane, right?
I can imagine that if you had a group of women friends and you weren't able to go on WhatsApp and say, hey, being exposed to somebody who was vaccinated is making me menstruate halfway through my cycle, that if that wasn't an acceptable or a credible thing to say, you would have to cut yourself off from the group.
Nobody would buy it.
What kind of safety would you have there?
Honestly, Matthew, midway through, I don't know when that speech was.
I think it was the same summer.
She texted me at some point and invited me over for a bottle of wine because like I missed like I miss her I missed her right a lot I don't know who this person is now but I missed her and so I'm sure she missed me and at one point in a vulnerable moment she texted me and said come over for a bottle of wine and I thought But you just cried and said that vaccinated people would make your uterus fall out or whatever she said, I forget.
So why am I allowed to come over and be near your child, be near you?
I don't understand the logic there.
I didn't bring that up because I didn't want to trigger her.
I wanted to keep things, but that was going through my mind.
It's like, so, so the fact that she invited me over means that She's just really angry and wants people to listen to her and validate her, right?
And that's just what we're dealing with now.
You know, speaking of, like, who is the person you know, and now I guess we can move on to who is around them, because one of the things that we can hear in that clip is that there are other key anti-vax radicals that You know, we can hear shouting and swearing in the background at the City Hall event.
When did you start to get a sense that Stephanie's social circles were changing, and did that start online?
Did you know any of her new friends and contacts?
Were they really friends?
How did that all go down?
Well, it definitely started online, and it was sort of the Blocking and sort of getting rid of all of her previous contacts and I think it was a lot of not only friends but people she had worked with or trained sort of in every circle sort of getting rid of blocking a lot of those people because I know she was getting a lot of backlash.
There was a turnover I guess of Blocking, getting rid of anyone who was disputing what she was saying online, and then going fully public with those views and attracting people who agreed with her, and that was sort of the changeover, I guess, of people.
And then I think things, for me at least, really changed like viewing this as a breakup.
I saw a post on her Instagram, I can't remember which one, of around the time where we would do our yearly potluck of her with a group of women and almost the same number of women that we had in our group.
And her saying that this was her her freedom potluck or something.
And it was a year that actually we all did a Zoom potluck.
And so obviously, like, there was a difference there.
And it was just a very obvious, like, if she was my ex-boyfriend, it would be like her him, like showing off a new girlfriend.
And I was like, OK, message received.
So I think that was definitely it for me.
Yeah, I think that this, like her finding her tribe in quotation marks, definitely occurred post her, you know, ending things with our group of friends and going, like Jean said, going on these tirades.
Anyone who dissented, she would block.
And then it was just this online community, right, that blossomed with All of this misinformation that's out there and them feeling like they've found their people, these people who are, you know, privy to information that the rest of us are just missing out on.
And also people who have also lost their friends and connections as well, who are now finding each other and they've all been through this experience where they've either cut off or been cut off from their friends and family also.
So the Freedom Potluck is actually a chosen family potluck.
We don't know who the people are, but we can surmise that these are all recent relationships of people who are likewise alienated or have alienated themselves.
Absolutely.
Now, speaking of influences and also social media, one prominent Influencer in her life is a woman named Susan Stanfield, with whom Stephanie runs the social media account called 100 Million Moms.
It doesn't really have 100 million subscribers to it, but it's a very active group.
Did any of you know Stanfield before they met up or bonded?
And does Stephanie's relationship with Susan Stanfield make sense to you?
Stanfield, just for the listeners, I'll add some clips, but she is an extraordinarily caustic influencer who drives a lot of the COVID is Holocaust-type rhetoric.
She sells orange t-shirts that parody First Nations Indigenous rights concerns.
She does all kinds of very noxious things.
How did Susan come into her life and did you know anything about her beforehand?
God, no.
No.
No.
This is a new, this is a new Steph searching for her people online and the two of them recognizing very similar self-interest, self-motivated, how do we capitalize on what we're thinking?
We lost, like, we've burned our bridges.
Where do we go from here?
Oh, here we are.
I'm not saying this is a conscious conversation and I don't know her.
I don't know anything about their relationship but I would bet that they don't actually have a Friendship.
And I can't imagine that being a vulnerable good place for stuff to to grow with.
I think they just both recognize that they both wanted a platform for nonsense.
Yeah.
And as far as I know, Susan Stanfield is no longer affiliated with 100 Million Moms.
So can we say that it's one less than 100 Million Moms?
And you know what?
And it's and it's funny and it's You know, it's easy to laugh at, but you know, the name comes from a really deeply disgusting and harmful group.
One Million Moms is a group from the States that is against sinful media portrayals, they say.
If a company had a commercial that featured two men and a couple as fathers, they just say, this is disgusting.
They're completely homophobic, completely, you know, bigoted, etc.
And yeah, so it's unclear if that was a conscious decision, but it's very similar, very similar name.
Now is that something that one of you might have pointed out to Stephanie and said, hey, do you know where this comes from, or this is a bad look?
Did any of you try that out, or was it beyond that?
No, because by the time 100 Million Moms was formed, our friendship had already ended.
We were no longer in communication.
Um, so we haven't spoken to her about that at all.
I can guarantee that if anyone, you know, called attention to the fact that she had this name similarity with a group like that, it would be the same response that You know, she gives to anything like that, which is like, I didn't know that and I don't care and I don't affiliate with anyone.
I'm just myself believing, you know, what I believe.
So I don't think that would have influenced her either.
Either way, my guess would be she had no idea and is completely oblivious.
You know, there's something that's a little bit haunting about this part of the story, because when, Frankie, did you say that it's unlikely that they actually have a real relationship in which there can be vulnerability, that it's probably quite opportunistic?
I mean, I can imagine that that's a very painful thing to reflect upon, because it must, retrospectively, Make you think about, well, what was the nature of our friendship?
What was the nature of how we related to each other?
What was underneath all of that?
Does it cast some question upon that or no?
Absolutely not.
I know that we had a real relationship.
I know all of us did with her and all of us still do.
And with each other, not with Stephanie Moore.
We had a real relationship with her.
And what's interesting is that looking back on the past two years, her presence online and her need to go and scream at people in the sweet potato, go and, you know, on her birthday, go on an Instagram Live and just talk for hours.
Like, these were times that we would be talking with her, that I would be talking with her.
I don't know if it's just me, but I can see a very clear time in which we stopped being her friend and she started screaming her head off online and taking to the streets.
Now, I'm not saying it's causal, but it's definitely a huge, like, coincidence.
Well, especially the sense that this is time that she would have spent hanging out with her friends And now there's the opportunity to do a selfie livestream.
That's quite haunting, actually, because there is, as you say, it's not causal, but there's this one-to-one sort of replacement of one form of socialization with another that must be so difficult to understand.
I do think that it really is quite sad when we look at the social media piece here, because like Frankie said, we are a group of women who have a friendship of 20, 25, some of us 30 years.
There's not a day that goes by that our group of friends don't recognize and appreciate and share our gratitude for this family that we have within each other.
Yeah.
I know whether or not she will ever admit this, it is a great loss to have lost this group of friends because we do see and understand how rare it is to have such a long-lasting sustainable friendship that is family and you guys aren't going anywhere.
We're here for life and the way that we show up for one another and support one another, encourage each other through everything, So what I see when I see her holding her phone, essentially talking to a reflection of herself, and like Rosa said, getting that recognition with the likes or the little hearts, I see a sad woman who doesn't have a friend to call and share these stories with.
So she goes on and says, hey guys, I've got something on my mind, and talks to herself for an hour, sometimes longer.
And just like Frankie said those wouldn't in other times have been a phone call to me or Frankie and Grace I need to come over I've had a day and I'd say girl get over here you know and she's lost that with her friends with her job with her in her entire life.
Yeah her entire life.
And so she is I see a sad woman who's searching for some validation, searching for some sort of connection.
And, you know, if she's listening and she believes that she's found that now, then that's great.
I don't know what else to say.
Can't argue with that.
Yeah, I can't argue with that.
As you said, Grace, hey guys, in kind of an echo of how 100,000 Instagram live streams begin, I wonder how often this story is actually replicated throughout the world.
Because there's just something so stunning about hearing You talk about the displacement of one form of communication with another, almost like a light switch had been thrown where it could have been a phone call, but actually it's this very abstract pseudo-intimacy created with a whole bunch of people that aren't there, really.
It, when you are on a, I don't know, I've never done an Instagram Live, that terrifies me, but I would imagine there's not really room for anybody to question you or call you out because essentially you're talking to yourself.
So I imagine it's, that's a free place, right?
To share whatever's on your mind without any opposing views.
Well, there are comments that come in, right, and we can say hello to the friends who joined the live stream, and then we can also say fuck off to the trolls, but there's no real in-between, right?
It's like, hey, you're on, you're supporting me, oh, you're trolling me, or you're leaving a bad comment, so you can kiss my ass, you can leave.
Right, there's no real, it's not really about dialoguing at all, no.
I mean, it's a parody of that.
It's the perfect platform if you don't want to hear anyone's opinion and you want to feel like what you're saying is absolutely factual and correct, you know?
The number of times she uses the word facts and then says something that's absolutely not factual, but there's no one there to have the conversation, so... Right.
Yeah, it's fucked!
Right.
Yeah, and that's quite stunning to me, too, because our entire life she looked to us for answers with things, right?
Like she would come to us, guys, I don't even know what this election is.
Who am I voting for?
What's going on?
And we'd share with her and she'd say, OK, thanks.
Trust you guys.
Yeah, and all of a sudden you don't trust us anymore, and you don't... And I just wanted, because a story, to just continue on this, a story popped into my mind about how I actually lived an experience where I was having a conversation with her and she
Wouldn't fully talk back to me, but she'd actually go on Instagram to give the response to me, but on Instagram So she she had texted me a video And she made it very clear that it was an african-american PhD She typed those words because I guess she thought that oh, I'm gonna definitely listen to this person or whatever whatever went through my
And I had decided, like I said, like listening to these clips and how she was with me personally, nothing to do with even her views sometimes, just how aggressive she is with me.
I was like, I don't want to engage with you anymore.
And I made that clear.
And I had a video of her where she went online and she was like, If anyone has a direct line to my friends, uh, you tell those bitches to stand up for your rights.
And I was like, I, so I sent her that video of herself and I said, you're calling us bitches.
Like I don't, I don't want you to speak about us indirectly online anymore.
I don't want to engage with you anymore.
Then she takes a screenshot of me sending her the video, puts it online, puts a little caption that says, She told me to stop calling her a bitch!
Fuck your feelings!
This is not about it!
And then, so then I, I tell her, listen, Steph, I just saw that post again.
Like, I'm like, I literally had to write in caps.
It's, I'm going to read it.
I'm sorry.
I said to her, it's not the topic.
It's you all in caps, how you all in caps are, and how you all in caps treat people and talk.
I'm like, bitch is real classy.
Goodbye.
And then she goes on Instagram live immediately and goes, you know what?
It's, it's, uh, you know why she got mad at me?
Because she knows I know the truth.
And she said it just like me.
And, and then I listened to about a minute of that before I felt nauseous.
And yeah, so I experienced it.
I experienced her literally talking to social media and me.
I do think social media is a very important piece to bring up here.
I've said this to the girls privately before we came on this podcast.
Long before COVID or any of this mess ensued, Steph was always much more active on social media than any of us and it started to get to a point where she was She's actually living her life for and on Instagram.
And any actual in-person interactions would have to be documented.
Photos would have to be taken and posted, and videos would have to be made and shared, and it really sort of took away from the intimacy of being together in person.
So it's not so surprising to me that her social media activity has skyrocketed since our fallout, but I do think it's a very dangerous place to live.
When you are living in and on Instagram, we know how these algorithms work already, and we know that You are being fed more and more of the same and this is the only place she receives quote-unquote information and she shares it.
She receives it and shares it with a wide following, a growing following and that's really what I think is probably one of the most scary things to me is that people are now looking up to her as a leader, as somebody who has answers and has information to share And she's really just so misguided.
I just find that very scary.
I know, Matthew, you've talked a lot about social media on some of your other episodes, so...
I think you're absolutely right that the entire structure of the technology is meant to exacerbate conflict.
It's meant to bring the most sort of inflammatory content to the surface so that it can be shared and amplified.
And really increase engagement through a kind of emotional escalation and manipulation.
And it sounds like that is a huge part of the story here, that somehow Instagram stepped into your friend group and tore it to shreds or weakened it to the point where somehow she could escalate and perform the breakup with you, Frankie, on Instagram Live.
In this extraordinary way, that's a very chilling story, actually, because that would have been a conversation that you just simply would have had face-to-face.
But at a certain point, you're not even Frankie anymore.
You're a prop in the social media landscape that you're abstract.
You've become a non-person, actually.
Yeah, and to be clear, that's why I had the reaction to her texting me that I did, because I knew that she was just using it for fire to get online and go rant that day.
Yeah, and it really does feel kind of like this perfect storm of having sort of an extreme personality and sort of being very strong in your views, kind of going down that path of, you know, Becoming more and more extreme in those views and then also having this need to sort of be sharing on social media all of the time.
And I feel like all of these figures who have kind of become influencers in that world sort of have that perfect storm of traits.
And it is just scary to see when it's someone you know really well.
And you know, we used to be a group that would actually ground Steph.
There were countless occasions that Steph would come to us with a story of some fight she just got on Facebook with some other, I don't know, personal trainer or something.
We would all say, but Steph, what?
You don't have to fight with this woman online.
Just don't bother with that, you know?
Don't waste your time with that.
That's just a stupid lady on Facebook, and she'd be all riled up about it, and we, I think, wouldn't calm her down.
Like, time after time, it was more than once.
She had it in her.
Yeah and just even with the pictures like before we all had phones she had a digital camera.
She took all the pictures when we went out like and she when Facebook started she had the most like elaborate uh albums and she named them and it was just like like Summer Nights on the Porch 07 and I was like oh great now I have I had this whole catalogue of my life, and I'm actually sad that I'm blocked, because I've lost so many things!
I took no pictures, and she took them all, so... Oh, that's so wild, because, okay, so now you're saying that this propensity for media made her kind of like the group Archivist, but the social media structure of the accounts and such means that those albums are private, or they can be privatized.
They can be withdrawn, like this thing that you were actually part of and that you were central to making that you're not going to have access to just because you're blocked.
I can really see the amputation too, right?
You're not just talking about losing a friend, but also part of what that friend did was, in a strange way, held you together with a kind of record keeping.
Yeah, I hadn't really thought about the fact that all of those photos were now cut off from.
Yeah, that hadn't occurred to me either.
So do any of you have children who played with Stephanie's daughter?
And I'm just wondering how you imagine this is impacting the family life.
None of us have children, actually.
And I think that really, um, I didn't know whether or not we should speak to that, but I think that, um, because she was the first of us to like get pregnant and have a baby, I think that that.
For just, just because it is different.
It made her feel separate.
And, um, and we were there to support her in the best ways that we can and we could, and we did.
And I think that, um, looking back when she's looking for reasons, I honestly think that she, she thinks that, Oh, after I had a baby, they just never got it.
And now all of her supporters are mama bears.
This is her brand, actually, right?
Of her fitness company is Glowing Mama Fitness?
Yes, and it was her brand before having children.
Yeah, it's an essential part of the conspirituality movement is to focus on this hyper heteronormativity and rigid gender roles and to Invoke this kind of like divine sense of what it means to be either a woman or a man in some exalted way.
That's a very strong part of the entire scene.
More recently, she did start to voice these opinions that were very clearly anti-trans and sort of stating that, you know, Only women give birth and only women can breastfeed and things like that, which is, at least to my knowledge, like I had never heard her say anything like that before.
And so it seemed to be like a bit of a new direction or new view that she had taken on only recently, and it just really plays into exactly what you were just saying.
The themes are transitive, right?
Like if you start out Being very concerned about the safety of vaccinations.
At a certain point, somebody is going to start talking to you about EMF frequencies, and then at another point somebody's going to talk to you about the fluoride in the water, and then suddenly the hormones in the sewage treatment plant are turning the frogs gay.
Uh, and then that leads you to gender critical theory and, and so on.
Like it's, they really, the, the, the, the paranoias really blend together.
Uh, and we've seen that time and again in the influencers that we've studied.
In our pre, uh, panel exchanges, we, we did a little bit of emailing back and forth.
You've said this during the panel as well.
Many of you mentioned being shocked at how impervious Stephanie has been to intervention, to people offering other points of view and so on.
Now, as you've prepared for a meeting like this, have any of you been thinking about trying again or a new approach or something else that might work?
I would say absolutely not.
I don't think anything's going to work.
It's so unfortunate.
It makes me really sad for her.
I really don't think that anything's going to change her mind, you know?
And I wish so much that there could be something, but she really, her only move is to double down, right?
Her only move is to deny.
She's in too deep now to say, What could she say that doesn't negate all of her expertise that she's given herself, right?
So to acknowledge any error is like It's just a tipping point that would crash all of this kind of like sandcastle of a world that she's built.
So yeah I don't feel optimistic about it.
I think that if probably any of us were to reach out now it would probably even have the opposite effect where she would probably just retreat even further into her views and it would probably make her push back even more.
Yeah, I fully expect if she does listen to this to to talk about it that day and use it as turn it turn it.
She has a unique ability to see things in a way where she turns it so that it's in her favor and and and really rejustifies the work she's already doing.
And just seeing her at the Eaton Center, seeing her face up close.
There was one particular clip where she had the phone on herself and she was we were watching her watch the surroundings.
And you can see that while she was taking stuff in, I could see a million emotions going through her.
And it was, and it was like, she is getting such, um, a validation and A sense of power and finding who she is from what she's doing right now that I feel like any sort of, can you look at it critically?
Can you take your identity out of it?
She's just so ego.
She's only ego that I feel that it would be like asking her to kill herself at this point.
And so I feel like what's scary is I feel like we're watching her drive into a brick wall at a thousand kilometers an hour and maybe that'll lead her to to getting some sort of help but honestly i have no idea how she's going to get there grace do you have anything to add i don't know
Sometimes I wonder if, you know, if she heard from somebody else who was perhaps a cult survivor or somebody who maybe shared her views on vaccinations and has come out on another side, would that do anything?
I don't really know.
I think we've kind of just accepted that she may not Change her mind and that's okay.
I don't think we're here today to try and change her mind.
So...
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't think she ever really thought differently.
I think it's not that her mind has to be changed.
I think that it's the emotional response that we're all reacting to.
It's the intensity of how she's decided to express herself.
And it's not like she, you know, was Someone who was going to vaccinate her kid and then saw a plandemic and was like, Oh, I've changed.
Like she's just always been this way.
It's just now it's very scary.
She's linking up with seriously dangerous people.
And, and, um, yeah, yeah, it is.
It is quite haunting because I don't know if you're aware of this and I don't know when this will air so by the time this airs this may already happen but this upcoming Sunday she's speaking about a rally that is to be held at Jurassic Park outside of the Scotiabank Arena.
It is not a child-friendly event.
Do not bring your children.
We will be taking action, serious action, and we won't be telling you what this action is until you arrive 11 30 this Sunday.
That sounds really scary to me.
For non-Toronto listeners, Jurassic Park is like the sort of common square outside of the Air Canada Centre where the Toronto Raptors play, and that's what the funny name is about.
And they're going to be taking serious action.
Is there a pop-up vaccine clinic there?
They're not going to watch the basketball game.
No, it's at 11am on a Sunday.
I don't know, but that's...
That sounds like some threatening language.
That's pretty scary to me to hear.
Yeah, that's new.
Yeah, and it does seem like each time is escalating a little bit more, which is also a little concerning.
And if Steph is listening, I do want to ask her, so what's your endgame here?
What is the actual endgame?
What do you envision?
The we did it you know instead of taking false like I think she thought that um a recent opening of what was it something opening it was it was in the summertime with the parks oh yeah I think at one point she took credit for the parks um being open again for children because of some action she did on I don't even know I can't follow this up but basically she thought that the mama bears had done it when it's like
No, nobody wants these parks closed and we closed them because we had to for a bit and now they're open again.
Not a big deal.
But she stood up to Mayor John Tory and she got it done.
All of this really comes back to herself right this her entire narrative is me focused and in those clips that you just played we see that exemplified right you getting vaccinated is affecting me but when we said please wear your mask because you not wearing your mask is affecting me she says well go fuck yourself it's my body my choice and That's the other thing too.
Sorry if this is a tangent.
She's about body autonomy.
Okay, so I want to vaccinate myself for my- so why are you at a vaccine clinic with people in line exercising their body autonomy trying to change their mind about the choice they've made about their body?
Like, please explain that to me.
It's more than just that you're- she's restricting the bodily autonomy.
She's there saying Vaccination, other people's vaccination is affecting her health.
So then maybe it wouldn't be the safest place for her to go to a Nathan Phillips Square vaccine clinic, right?
If she's so worried about her health, maybe that's she should.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's true.
Yeah.
It's like, there's just so much of it that is contradictory and doesn't make a lot of sense and is really ironic in a lot of ways too, that it's hard to even follow.
You know, I'm trying to think of like how to round this up without it being just very sad, really.
You know, the question about do you think that something would work or something would change or what kind of strategy for contact?
It sounds that you're all pretty clear that It's difficult to imagine such a thing.
And so I think, Frankie, you said perhaps some crisis will necessitate that she reaches out for help.
And, you know, I think that many of us are familiar with that from friends that are struggling and we don't know how to help them.
One thing that's occurring to me is that Steve Hassan and all of the cult recovery experts actually that I've spoken to on the show and I've interviewed for various pieces of journalism, they all focus on what we actually talked about in the beginning of the episode, which is that if it were at all possible
Um, what would you, what kind of activity, in-person activity, would you do with this person to help them remember who they were before all this happened?
Like, how would you, what kind of in-person thing would you do that would give some kind of memory of the normalcy of the relationship.
So, I guess in the absence of having any answers, maybe we can just imagine that for a moment?
Like, what would you really love to do that would recapture some of what you described at the top of the episode and might actually jog a memory of a former life?
Well, I think most recently seeing her in the Eaton Center with the phone showing her dancing to a new song like Home of the Brave or whatever nonsense this person wrote.
But really enjoying herself dancing and it's like, I saw her face and I was like, I know that face.
I've danced with that dancer before, like, I think, like, that would be one of the things, like, yeah, again, like, going back, like, finding that Mick CD, I don't know.
I was just gonna say, like, dancing would be really cool, but it can't be some, like, uh, you know, anti-vax country stuff or whatever, right?
Finding an old Mick CD, going for a cruise, and, I don't know, singing along to something, perhaps.
I don't know.
I think a reason why we came together to do this is because, or at least, sorry, I'll speak for myself, I think I wanted to do this as a form of closure because I know that that relationship is over.
And however this turns out, I don't, I think the path isn't to bring her back.
I don't think there's anything to bring back to.
I think it's just mitigating harm and I hope she has someone still from her old life that keeps her from doing serious, serious harm.
But yeah, I think we just have to accept that this is just how it is now.
Well, maybe there was something presumptuous about my question then too, right?
That in asking you to recall something or to imagine something, that in itself is maybe not what you need.
So I want to acknowledge that too.
I think that, you know, if I were kind of trying to be optimistic and speak to others who have lost people in the same way, I think the idea that you can convince them, I think what's given me a sense of peace is this
Recognition that it's not going to happen with her and that I'm not going to try but you know to be there if that person shows up again and to be willing and open to to letting them back in and and helping them but I think what caused a lot us a lot of harm earlier on was this idea that There's gotta be something that's gonna snap her out of this.
There's gotta be some way that someone can get through to her.
And it was the letting go of that idea that really, I think, brought more peace because Yeah, I don't feel optimistic that she's going to change her mind, but I do feel that there might be some people like her that aren't as stubborn, that aren't as egotistical, that could come back and welcome them with open arms if they do.
Well, maybe this is a way to end then, because if there would be an impulse to try to reconnect, and you're actually saying that it gives a lot of relief to realize that it's not going to be successful, it's not going to work out in some idealized way, the energy that you would put into that Where would you put it now?
Where would you put it in the sense of creating the cultural, the communal, the structural conditions by which this is less likely to occur?
Maybe that's the question.
The answer to that for me is releasing the anger that I'm holding.
I think that that's part of the reason why I don't listen to her is that I'm trying to to not reignite a fire.
I'm trying to really understand where she's coming from and Just not hold so much anger so that it like Rosa said if she does Decide to come back in a way that I recognize as a true Vulnerable friend and not as fodder for her next live I would be there and so and I know that I wouldn't be able to be there if I don't work on
I'm releasing the anger that I'm feeling for her right now.
So that's definitely something I'm gonna work on.
I have another thought just thinking about your question.
And just the fact that, like, I'll speak personally, but I think that this is something that speaks for some of our friends and other people that I know as well.
It's that Steph and people like her that are coming from such a place of anger and rage and trauma, And are projecting that into the world.
They bring that out in people who generally aren't that way.
Like, I'm not an angry person.
You know, I don't fight with people and my life is pretty conflict-free.
But she brings in that fire.
She makes it rise up in people.
And so I think the only kind of antidote to that kind of energy is because that creates this kind of division, right?
So then we have a more and more divided society.
And we, you know, people say, I hate them.
Like, I hate anti-vaxxers.
When they come outside my window, I'm like, Oh my God, just go, you know?
And so it brings up this kind of energy of Of collective hate.
And I think the antidote to that is, you know, a sense of kindness and compassion.
You know, if we have kindness and compassion, we're not going to have the kinds of Huge divisions that we have now but I mean that's super idealistic.
Yeah and I think also just to sort of add to what you were saying there too just when I was thinking about even joining this conversation I was sort of thinking of like the reasons why
Why I even want to be a part of it and I think one piece of it also is like I do think having a conversation like this is important because when we just see these characters online they are really just they seem like caricatures of people and you kind of just think that they were always this way um or that they um you know there's something deeply wrong that has been like that from the beginning but you don't really hear the their origin story you don't really hear
That there was a different side of them or you don't see the other side that's not being presented.
So I think it is important to have these sort of conversations just to show sort of more sides to these people.
And it is like, it is such a, yeah, I guess like a nuanced And that the other side isn't the complete opposite.
It's just, it's willingness to have a conversation that isn't so extreme.
And I think that's like, I think she's decided that we're the other side, therefore we represent the extreme opposite of everything she believes.
But we just, we just don't want to live in the extreme with her.
We're just, yeah.
I guess what I'm hearing is that the kindness that you would hold for this friendship to be renewed is something that would just be good to hold in general.
And that if that were true, that, you know, it's in these individual tragic circumstances, we might not be able to see any kind of reversal or repair.
But In a more general sense, we might find ourselves in a kinder place.
Absolutely.
Thank you, everybody, for your time and your clarity and your empathy.
It's a real honor to have you all speak to this very difficult issue.
And yeah, thank you.
Thank you for having us.
It was really wonderful.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, thank you, Matthew.
I'm really happy that we had this chance to do this.
Thanks, Matthew.
And thanks so much to my loves.
Listeners, thank you for tuning in to Episode 91.
We have to talk about Stephanie.
I wanted to tack on this outro before publishing because I've had a few thoughts about it all since Frankie, Rosa, Jean, and Grace joined me just a few short weeks ago.
First of all, the stakes of the issues raised in this panel discussion are only rising.
The occupation and convoy movements have exploded since this panel sat down together, and from what we've seen so far, the pastel QAnon influence is playing a significant role in providing emotional support and spiritual justification for an increasingly volatile situation.
On the day the convoy rolled down the 401 highway in northern Toronto, Stephanie boosted the Meet and Greet events on Instagram, inviting her 17,000 followers to show up and donate sandwiches, money, and snacks to the drivers at scheduled stops.
Two days after that, she posted a meme photo of a truck bearing a Fuck Trudeau banner on its grill, with a photoshopped Prime Minister poking his head up out of a sewer grate about to be run over.
Now there might be a QAnon underground tunnels theme in there, Trudeau being down with the mole children and so on.
There's no indication that Sibio is headed into any of the occupation hotspots, whether in Ottawa or in Windsor or Sarnia, but as I laid out last week and in the bonus episode, moral and spiritual support for an increasingly threatened contingent who are glued to their phones and looking for any help or blessing they can find
who are told they are free and sovereign and full of light can only increase unwarranted grandiosity and reckless self-righteousness.
But I'm also thinking about the question I asked the panelists right at the beginning.
I asked, if you imagine Stephanie listening to this, what would you want her to know up front about why you're speaking today and what your hopes are?
Now, I asked the question to set the tone, but also because I didn't seek the panel members out.
One of the panelists initially approached me on behalf of the group, so I wanted to have that impulse on record.
But what is my answer?
If Stephanie is listening, or somebody in her position is listening, what do I want that person to know?
I think I want them to know that mainly, underneath the politics, underneath the acute frustration that we likely feel about each other over COVID policy, I feel I understand where she's at.
At least a little.
As a cult survivor, I would want her to know that I understand a little bit about what it feels to be swept up in a torrent of urgent passion.
To find something that perhaps for the first time ever feels like it could have meaning or make a difference in an apathetic world.
What it means to work sleeplessly on a plan to turn history around.
I know what it means to be a spokesperson for ideas I believed only I and my band of fellows had access to.
I know what it feels like to treasure a sacred idea and to protect it within me like a holy grail.
In the midst of all that passion, I sacrificed work, contact with my birth family, emotional stability, and a sense of home.
I felt yanked up into a hurricane of necessity to make the truth that no one else could understand, a truth that was vast, but also vague, but also absolutely critical, into something everyone would finally accept.
And then when they didn't accept it, a strange thing happened.
Because this truth was so deeply embedded in who I thought I was, it felt like the world I had previously known was now rejecting me as a person.
That everyone was hating me as a person.
And, this is the weird part, there was a part of me that actually liked this.
It allowed me to turn rejection into validation and prove that I was somehow right.
So as people criticized and disapproved, I had permission to harden myself up.
Permission to go deeper within myself.
To increase my internal control.
To increase my certainty.
And I remember that every level of doubling down felt exhilarating, but also perilous, and then exhausting.
I remember that underneath it all, in brief moments of honesty, in flickers and flashes, realizing that I was alone.
That if I needed help, I couldn't go to my family and old friends because an enormous distance had opened up between us.
If I had doubts in my current path, I couldn't tell any of the new people around me what they were because I might lose them as well.
And strangest of all, if I had doubts or needed help, I couldn't really check in with myself either because when I did, there was just this brick wall telling me I had to stick with a single message, a single pathway, a single way of being in the world.
I honestly don't know how it changed.
How all of that pressure began to ease off and I began to feel like I was just a person again and not always on the brink of triumph or catastrophe.
One part of what happened was that an old friend sent me a letter just asking me what had happened and sharing his feelings about the fact that I was just gone.
I'll link to that letter in the show notes because it's kind of amazing.
Another part of it was that I came across some books about cults.
I opened up this book by Steve Hassan called Combating Cultic Mind Control and I read it in about three hours.
And then there was another book and another.
This was all before phones and social media so I was lucky.
I suppose today I'd want to make sure that I was reading real hard copy books and not articles on a phone where I could toggle out to other apps.
So just as inexorably as I'd been drawn in, I was drawn out.
But it didn't feel like the same process.
It wasn't by force.
It wasn't inexorable.
It was more like a slow putting back together of the puzzle pieces of a prior self, a more familiar self.
Curious and quieter.
You know, it's kind of amazing to realize that the people I knew during those six years are entirely gone from my life.
As if they were ghosts.
People that I spent 24 hours a day with.
People I commiserated with, did urgent projects with.
People with whom I was saving the world.
All of them gone.
Not just because there is guilt and shame and recrimination for leaving a group or blame and acrimony for when it falls apart.
But I think they're gone because those relationships were built on unreal expectations, shrill emotional demands.
These were relationships built on sand.
And I'm talking about 1996 to 2003 here, so that sand is more stable than social media bonds can afford.
Back then we at least lived together, ate meals together, tried to make money together.
That's one of the things that's going on in Ottawa, by the way, which is the attempt to create In real life bonds.
That's why that wooden structure that was set up as a soup kitchen for people was so important symbolically, but also like somatically, kinetically.
But not even those real world brick and mortar investments were enough to create lasting connections.
Because the reason we were all in the same place together was a lie.
I'm recording this on Saturday morning, really early, February 12th.
Yesterday afternoon, an Ontario court granted an injunction against the various occupation outbreaks, which would allow police broader powers to clear them.
Seemingly in response, the Ottawa occupiers erected a professional concert stage running on generators with a jumbo screen.
And on the main mic was occupation leader Pat King, dancing a jig to Newfoundland fiddle rock.
It was a huge party, with hundreds draped in Canadian flags, many of them having big, earnest emotions.
But the thing is, Pat King is lying about his objectives and about his nationalism.
He's a political separatist.
He's a white nationalist.
But he's got a lot of people dancing.
I remember dancing like that.
It was actually a big part of one of the groups I was in.
And I remember thinking that those dancing beside me would care for me, always, that they would be there.
It was an illusion.
It took a long time to reconnect to the regular world and to people.
I wasn't very good at friendship for a lot of years.
But then I also got lucky, like really lucky.
I remarried.
I started a new family.
I grew closer to my parents again and had a few years of like just normal stuff with them before my mother died.
And I also accepted something about myself.
That I wasn't uniquely gifted or meant to save anyone or anything.
That I could help out with things, but that I would have limitations.
The cults I was in, very much like the conspirituality and anti-vax movements of today, gave me really strong ideas about the world, but then also about my body.
That my body was blessed, that I would be healthy in body and mind so long as I kept in line with the proper beliefs.
And now I feel something a lot more healthy, which is vulnerability and everyday fear and a constant sense of uncertainty.
I am older, my joints hurt, my sleep can be fragile, my mind is a swirl of trouble and joy, and no single idea or belief will calm me down or serve as a life raft.
But what I do have is a sense of quiet solidarity with everyone else in this same extremely normal position.
And this means that I can connect with more people, with neighbors, with fellow parents, an old friend from high school that I was just emailing with this week.
So that's what I'd like Stephanie and everyone else in her position to know.
Hey, thanks again for listening. - Yeah.
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