Episode 135: Lingerie Anon with Annie Kelly feat David Farrier
How the hip New Zealand brand Lonely Lingerie and its employees have suffered from the owners' QAnon beliefs and COVID-19 denialism. We cover how 5D Ascension and 'Star Seeds' came to populate their official brand feed. This episode was written by Annie Kelly and features David Farrier, the documentarian behind Tickled and Dark Tourist — who happens to have done extensive journalism on Lonely Lingerie.
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Welcome, listener, to Chapter 135 of the QAnon Anonymous Podcast, the Lingerie Anon episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Shaik Rokitansky, Annie Kelly, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
This week, we bring you the story of an insta-famous lingerie brand from New Zealand, worn by a litany of young celebrities, and how its leaders got profoundly red-pilled and descended into QAnon madness.
In the driver's seat is our beloved Annie Kelly, who leaned into the journalistic work on the matter done by David Farrier, a filmmaker and journalist behind projects like Tickled and Dark Tourist.
David also happens to be our guest this week, so he'll explain how he ended up going down this rabbit hole and what consequences his explorations had.
But before all that... For my main story this week, Wisconsin QAnon follower charged for shooting paintball gun at Army Reserve Base.
So this is another recent story of a QAnon follower gone wild that was revealed in a criminal complaint in federal court.
Really?
A Girls Gone Wild reference?
Yeah, that's right.
So this story starts in early March when Ian Allen Olson spray-painted his blue Subaru with two giant Q's on the doors, plus the words, trust my plan on the front there.
And then also it has a where we go one, we go all, and also OMW2DC, meaning on my way to Washington, D.C.
How would you describe the paint job on this beautiful blue Subaru?
I would say it's incredibly bad.
It looks like it was defaced.
This looks like in RoboCop when the street criminals that just hang around are just spray painting different stuff, storefronts, with crude letters, with the bleeding paint because you spray painted it from too close and don't really know how to use it.
I was going to say, this looks like tattoos on the face of Zack Snyder's Joker.
It's in like this awful orange and his car is like a kind of like a blue, a blue-purple kind of steely color.
So strange.
The whole thing looks Joker-fied to the max.
Yeah, it looks kind of like Halloween-y almost.
Absolutely.
It's kind of the color scheme you would see on like a child's backpack.
Olsen did, in fact, make that 800-mile drive from Wisconsin to D.C.
There, he harassed some National Guardsmen and expressed his willingness to die for the cause.
This is from the criminal complaint.
On March 3rd, Olsen approached a National Guardsman, stating he was, quote, maybe going to do something crazy stupid tomorrow.
What?
Bro, I got fucking four locos in my trunk, and I'm thinking I'm gonna get a little crazy.
By tomorrow, he meant March 4th, which was famously supposedly the day of Trump's second inauguration, according to some QAnon followers.
Hold me back, bro.
Hold me back.
I'm about to take the deep state.
And asked them not to shoot him.
Shortly thereafter, Capitol Police stopped Olson, who said he wanted to, quote, test the National Guard tomorrow to see if they were loyal to the people or to the president.
Olson communicated his understanding that if he were shot by the National Guard, he would know the National Guard to be loyal to the president.
If Olsen were not shot, he would know the National Guard to be loyal to the people.
Olsen would not expound upon his plans and said he was waiting to be led by God, and that his actions would, quote, be big, and he was, quote, willing to die to fulfill this mission.
Olsen contended his actions would, quote, be bigger than jumping the fence, would unite eight billion people, and confirm the loyalty of the National Guard.
But let's be clear here.
You're basically going up to the National Guard and going, hey, buddy.
Is it gonna be cool if I storm the capital tomorrow?
Or are you going to stop me because I'm feeling kind of crazy?
I'm just checking.
I'm going to do something really stupid tomorrow and are you going to kill me if I do?
I don't think you will.
I think you know who's really president.
I believe in you.
So Capitol Police determined that Olson was a danger to himself and others and admitted him to a D.C.
psychiatric hospital.
There, Olson was diagnosed with a brief psychotic disorder and discharged on March 9th.
The end of this guy's 1984 will be like, I loved Joe Biden.
As he exits the hospital with like a fresh scar across his forehead.
A lobotomy scar.
Olsen didn't do anything rash in D.C.
besides that.
However, once he got back home, he did launch an ineffective attack against the Wisconsin Army Reserve Center located in Pewaukee, Wisconsin.
So wait, so maybe his psychotic episode wasn't so brief?
It did not seem like it was a brief.
It seems like it was an ongoing episode.
They were like, yeah, you should go home to your state.
So here's how the criminal complaint describes those events of March 15th.
Olson exited his vehicle, shouted, this is for America!
And, armed with what appeared to be a rifle, but was in fact an orange-in-color AR-15-style paintball gun, shot two to three rounds of paintball projectiles at the Reservists.
The Reservists were about 15 yards away from Olsen.
None of the projectiles struck the Reservists.
After Olsen shot the projectiles, Olsen's gun appeared to jam.
Olsen exclaimed to the Reservists, or words to that effect, At that point, the reservists, one of whom is a law enforcement officer, tackled Olsen to the ground and held him until law enforcement officers arrived.
He's like, this is not my only weapon, takes out a couple canisters of Gak, throws them like grenades.
Travis, I just want to confirm, is there anything here in whether he painted the car with the orange paintball gun?
No, two different kinds of paint, I'm told.
There's paintballs and spray paint for the car.
That's the stick and poke of graffiti, is using a paintball gun.
A search of Olsen's car turned up a gas mask, throwing knives, a police scanner, two-way radios, a taser, and military-style ballistic vest plates.
Officers also found a three-page handwritten manifesto which contained numerous mentions of Q and quote-unquote, my plan.
So does he think he's Q?
I think he has.
He believes in Q, but he doesn't believe in the plan.
He believes in my plan.
Yeah, that's right.
Which is much worse, actually.
My pillow, my plan.
That's the future of Q is like my Q. It's not, it's not the Q. It's just, what does it mean to you?
Yeah, explore your own Q. According to a detention motion filed by prosecutors, Olson continued to make threatening comments while in jail.
The document states that these comments include, I'm going to cause mass casualty when I get out of jail, and I am ready for this.
How many people need to die for a message to get across?
So this guy is absolutely, I mean, he's an extremist and is very worrying, but he's also ludicrously ineffective.
I mean, this is, I think, emblematic of a lot of QAnon, is that it's like a clown threatening to kill you.
Because there is the threat, and it's serious, you have to take it seriously, but it's also a clown, so you can't help but laugh at it.
Greetings, listeners.
It's your UK correspondent Annie here.
Although, confusingly, I'm actually on an ambassadorial mission regarding New Zealand today.
This comes partially as a result of the QAnon Anonymous podcast's official position of not respecting the independence of Commonwealth nations, but also because we're going to be talking about a lingerie brand.
And whenever the boys tried to talk about it, their eyes turned into the shape of hearts that propelled out their sockets.
And they kept making involuntary wolf howl sounds.
Yeah, it got in the way of writing.
It was really distracting.
Since over lockdown I have transcended my physical form to become a being of pure light and sound and therefore entirely immune to pleasures of the flesh, I stepped up to the task.
This episode is going to be covering an excellent and somewhat horrifying article by David Fire and Zoe Walker about a New Zealand lingerie brand called Lonely.
The piece, which was published in December 2020 for Ensemble magazine, is called Lonely Lingerie's Descent into QAnon, and recounts how the brand's two remaining co-founders, Helene Morris and Stephen Ferguson, fell down the rabbit hole.
The pair's new-age, Covid-denying, paranoid belief in the cabal began to shine through in both their social media posts and behaviour to their staff, who suffered through bullying, unsafe work practices and eventually mass resignations as a result of the director's increasingly tenuous grip on reality.
Then, as a special treat, we're going to interview one of the writers of the piece, the documentary maker and journalist David Farrier, to talk about the fallout to the article and his predictions for where the brand goes next.
But first, let's talk about Lonely Lingerie.
The article reads... Started in 2009, Lonely's praises have been sung far and wide.
Their ethos of body positivity resonating in the press and within the community they created off the back of these ideals.
Lena Dunham and Jemima Kirk famously posed for a Lonely Girls campaign in 2016, free of charge.
Such was their belief in the values promoted by the NZ-based lingerie company.
Lonely has been loved, worn, and promoted by an enviable list of fashion's coolest and influential, including Paloma Elliser, Petra Collins, Naomi Shimada, Kelly Oxford, Camila Mendes, Dolly Alderton, Alexa Chung, Barbie Ferreira, Gigi Hadid, Hailey Baldwin, Kim Kardashian, and Kylie and Kendall Jenner.
A lot of their success has been down to careful and very strategic marketing, focusing on body positivity, using models that broke the stereotype of who could be a model.
It was good stuff, and it genuinely did help push the now commonplace diversity and inclusivity conversations into the fashion mainstream.
They were not the first or only brand doing this, but they were near the front.
With no retouching or overt sexualization, Lonely's imagery and branding championed the female gaze with the much-touted brand tagline, quote, for women who wear lingerie as a love letter to themselves.
Something else I found, which I think is worth flagging up here, is how the brand eschewed television marketing and instead focused almost entirely on social media buzz.
Part of this, as the article points out, reflects a canniness in capitalising on a reputation for unusual models in the standardised world of lingerie ads.
I found hundreds of articles that, as far as I could tell, weren't paid for, celebrating the brand for putting models in their 50s, or plus-size models, or transgender models at the front and centre of their campaign.
But the shrewdness of the move, and as Farrier and Walker point out its relative earliness in terms of big public conversations about diversity in the media, with hindsight potentially point to something else, which is that the founders of this company were incredibly plugged in to the online world.
And it seems that feature of the company's co-directors, Steve Ferguson and Helene Morris, has reached a dark conclusion.
The article features several screenshots of their most recent Facebook posts, the language and tenor of which should be very familiar to listeners of this podcast.
Steve Ferguson writes, Over 40 million currently in slavery and trafficking.
Global paedophilia crime syndicates.
Paedo-wood.
Pizza gate.
Satanic child blood sacrifice.
The insidious truth of our world is not a conspiracy theory.
Wake up.
And another post, COVID is fake.
Jacinda Adern is a transsexual elite Kabbalist.
Oh boy.
Oh dear.
Also, isn't P-E-O-D, isn't that just like the New Zealand way of spelling it?
Like, don't they just spell it differently?
P-O-D?
No, I don't think New Zealand calls pedophiles peodophiles.
Pedophiles.
No, that's not.
They don't write phonetically.
Poetophiles.
Peodophiles.
I can't tell if you're serious, which is my favorite part of this.
It's not just Ferguson going off the deep end, but seems to be something of a folly or duel with both founders.
Helene Morris' Facebook posts reveal a similar language, including sharing a clip from the notorious Plandemic documentary.
Helene writes, Feel Bill Gates' energy and watch his body language.
The head of the WHO and Bill Gates, who basically owns the WHO along with the Communist Party of China, are both not doctors.
Not conspiring here, just digging deeper.
So irresponsible of me?
In the interest of fairness, it's worth noting that when she was reached for comment, Helene Morris responded claiming that Steve's account had been hacked, adding, Steve and I don't fully support lockdowns, amongst other thoughts we have to do with COVID slash life.
But our company has nothing to do with our personal beliefs, and we don't have any desire to share these with our staff or publicly.
We are very private people for a reason and prefer it that way.
Hence the name Lonely, lol.
But, as the authors of the piece point out, if Steve's account was hacked at the time of posting those conspiracy theories, then Helene's must have been as well, since the two interacted frequently in comments together.
Many years ago, I had a boss who was a 9-11 truther.
He would post videos on his Facebook about the Rothschilds and how we were all being controlled by Jews, which was honestly not an ideal working environment.
But he, at least mostly, had the good sense to not bring it up in real life.
It seems the workers at Lonely Lingerie, however, didn't get that luxury, since Ferguson and Morris didn't restrict their beliefs to kooky social media posts, but increasingly began to foist them on their staff too.
One of the most sinister ways this played out was in how the co-directors clearly stated beliefs that Covid was a hoax resulted in them taking serious risks with the physical welfare of their staff.
Two staff members, named as Megan and Olivia, give some details here.
Behind the scenes, several staff members felt the company was not taking COVID-19 health and safety seriously within the brand's Takapuna head office studio and three New Zealand stores in Ponsonby, Newmarket and Wellington.
Prior to the initial lockdown, Megan continued to ask senior management about the company's plan for having staff work from home, a recommendation from the government at the time.
They received no reply, so followed up with another email sent about two days before lockdown.
With a response from Steve saying, quote, Just keep calm and carry on.
At later alert levels, directives were given to retail staff from senior management that they were not required to limit people or impose social distancing.
Quote, We asked absolutely valid questions that involved health and safety, and it seemed like they never considered the health and safety of the people coming into store and the people working, says Olivia.
It's like, not just your pilled boss, you know, it sucks that he believes, or she believes these things, it's like, pilled boss now making basically, like, choices that affect labor, safety... Yeah, pilled labor practices, which, yeah, really bad.
You don't believe in masks!
You don't think they're fucking, all this stuff's real!
God, it's true that, like, to really fuck up a society ruled entirely by capitalist hierarchies, pill the bosses.
Because they can rain down all the pilledness on their employees in horrifying ways.
It's very effective.
Another staff member who worked in the offices described being berated by Ferguson via email for wearing a mask and gloves.
She also detailed that when hand sanitiser was brought into a store by one of the staff members, it was quickly removed for not being on-brand.
Oh my god.
I know.
Hey, you cleaning, you know, your hands with this, disinfecting yourself and wearing a mask is really not very body positive.
I can't see a whole part of your face.
The connection between the brand and QAnon is one that really fascinates me about this piece, because in a way it feels a bit like the dark and light sides of new age spirituality fighting with one another.
On the one side you've got all of this live and let live, radical acceptance philosophy, which clearly in some ways inspired the diversity and celebration of womanhood the brand was known for.
And then, on the other side, there's this darker, conspiracy-driven, purity-obsessed vibe that it feels like has only really become obvious to so many radicalisation researchers, myself included, in the past couple of years.
A lot of the insights into this dark side seem to have played out in private spaces, like personal social media feeds and staff conversations.
But it feels as if some of this rift came to light publicly during the Black Lives Matter protests of summer 2020.
It's not an uncommon belief in QAnon circles that the BLM protests were in some way set up by dark and sinister forces, potentially to undermine Trump.
And this belief has travelled overseas too.
I remember a woman I met at the Save the Children march in London referring to BLM as a dark energy.
It's not clear exactly what Lonely's directors thought about it all, because they kept quiet.
Including, even on the brand's social media.
At a time when so many other brands were speaking out in favour of the movement, the absence of comment was noticed.
The article reads...
Former staff we've spoken to also felt that the brand's silencing of its audience reflected on them, particularly those working in public-facing retail stores.
Former employee Nikki, who worked in store and had been with the company for under a year before leaving in June, had this to say, quote, I didn't like the fact that they were profiting off black and brown bodies and had outspoken models who were very much for the BLM movement and commenting on it publicly.
And their bodies were being used to sell lingerie for two people who refused to comment on it.
Their followers on platforms like Instagram seemed to notice too and started leaving comments pointing out the apparent strangeness that a brand that marketed itself as being progressive and diverse had chosen this moment to stay silent.
It's worth noting that many brands, even really big ones with far more ideologically varied customer base, were posting their support for BLM at this time.
In fact, some activists were even criticising those posts as relatively cheap gestures of support.
So the fact that Lonely didn't say anything is a possible indication of just how radicalised the co-directors had become.
The next facet to this story is the one I find most frightening, because it seems to me to involve such a blatant abuse of power over Lonely's staff.
We can't know exactly when Morrison Ferguson's descent into conspiracy started, But the article indicates many staff remember it happening around the time the pair got closely involved with Craig Reynolds, a former chiropractor who now, along with his wife, refers to himself as something called a reorganiser.
Oh my god.
Yeah.
In the same way that the first lobotomy artist reorganised your brain by sticking something up your nose.
Here's what their website says.
Craig and Carolyn's education gives them an extensive academic foundation and a substantial skill set to call on when necessary.
However, they believe that in this reorganizing process, they are seeing the evolution of healthcare and human development beyond what any traditional approaches have been able to provide.
They are committed to providing the highest quality, sustainable empowering processes available to people at this point in time.
At times this process is raw, but with that comes authenticity and a beauty that honors who we truly are and the gifts we have to contribute to the world.
It's literally just, like, complete gibberish.
Amazing.
So, yeah, I have no idea what any of that means.
But I have enough of a New Age cult radar to know when something weird is going on.
According to staff members, Ferguson and Morris, their bosses, would recommend they attend sessions at the practice.
Megan, the staff member we heard from earlier, described it like this.
I made an appointment and went along, but nothing he said made sense at all.
He was just talking gibberish about collective energy in the universe, she says.
Before Craig entered the scene, Steve and Helene also had introduced staff to other therapy and wellness sessions.
The team went to a group therapy session organized by the company.
It was led by a woman who I later found out was a friend of theirs.
I thought it was going to be about positivity and happiness, but for a few of us it was quite upsetting.
One of the exercises brought up some deeply personal and vulnerable memories I would never choose to experience in that environment, Megan says.
Although they projected an interest in our well-being and mental health, it was only in these superficial ways.
They weren't open to addressing the internal issues that would have alleviated our stress caused by the more toxic aspects of the company culture.
Increasingly, in the last year, Steve started giving us his unsolicited commentary and opinions on our personal growth and mental health in a way that was inappropriate for a work environment.
People increasingly think that they can just like be the fucking, you know, like a psych ward for their employees and just this insane lack of boundaries.
It is.
Yeah it feels like what's really kind of like so dark and horrible about like kind of like startup culture and all of that kind of sort of thing where you know they're like this is just a fun workplace where you can be yourself and then it kind of just like involves basically like taking over all these aspects of your personal life, do you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, I don't know, it feels like it would be, it would be like one of my worst nightmares if I went into like a job performance evaluation and they said like, you know, you know, Travis, I noticed that your vibration is very low recently.
Do you think you could like raise that to a higher level?
Travis, I noticed that you were unwilling to strip down to your underpants in the circle of employees while we lit candles in a darkened room.
Travis, I noticed that you were unwilling to strip down to your underpants in the circle of employees while we lit candles in a darkened room.
I really think that this is affecting your sales performance, and hopefully you can be willing to dress down in future sessions.
Travis, we're noticing that you're complaining about the baton death march we're making you do nude every morning as everyone dresses as Klingons and beats you.
I don't know, I just kind of feel like your attitude ain't there.
Where's the pizzazz of your early days?
That smile that I used to love.
Who, after all, wouldn't be grateful if your manager, who incidentally believes that Jacinda Ardern is an elite Kabbalist who murders children, started taking an interest in not just how you do your job, but how you develop on your personal spiritual journey.
Yeah, it's like if he's trying to determine if they're doing well, his trajectory is trying to get you to QAnon.
That is, this is one of the worst things, to have someone who has, like, pure financial control over you as an employee, and you just know they would be pleased if you got into QAnon.
I mean, it's one of the worst kinds of pressure.
Yeah, it's just like a complete nightmare.
And unsurprisingly, in June of 2020, they tried to push back.
The staff sent a letter addressed to Steve and Helene addressing both the failures to discuss BLM and install COVID safety measures to protect their customers and staff.
Additionally, they requested that someone else other than Steve be put in charge of the lonely Instagram account, which was posting soft but increasingly obvious COVID denialist content.
Oh my god.
Stephen Helain replied.
They opened with, Lonely has taken all of the concerns raised in this letter very seriously.
They stated they currently did not have a health and safety representative, but were looking to nominate a new one.
They also said they acknowledged that our message was unclear in regards to safety around COVID and social distancing.
We are happy to work with the staff to have a COVID response that everyone is comfortable with should we need this in the future.
Should we need this?
If COVID shows up again, we'll let you know.
If COVID turns out to be, say, a real virus, we will address, we will address your concerns.
They stated they were relooking at its HR protocols before ending with, all other concerns expressed in the attached letter will not be addressed with a response.
However, Lonely will be seriously considering all suggestions outlined.
So, unsurprisingly, following this response, several staff members resigned.
The article details that at least 15 people have resigned or been made redundant in 2020, including four members of senior management and the company's longest-standing employee.
Now, I know that New Zealand has had a comparatively much better global pandemic than the rest of us, but some basic research shows that their labour market has been suffering too.
I think the fact that so many members of staff were willing to resign shows what a completely unbearable place to work this had become.
It seems that it had some kind of impact on Ferguson and Morris too, although not the kind that you might be hoping.
At some point, Steve and Helene's minds increasingly drifted from Q to more spiritual matters.
The posts here get confusing, and there is some crossover, but it appears at some point during the pandemic, Steve became focused on the idea that he was a starseed.
Steve's first post says, Helene Morris, you 5% and Starseed.
Nothing comprehensible about that.
Steve goes on, the only ones who will like this will be the awakening slash awakened ones.
The others who see this and don't are 90% and IDGAF.
Another post from Steve.
The Eternal.
Oneness.
The Divine.
Cosmic Intelligence.
The Force.
Our Infinite Creator.
Source Energy.
Universal Mind.
The All.
Galactic Ordering Dynamic.
God.
Whatever you decide to call it, now is the time to turn to faith.
Trust the divine plan of God and all will be revealed.
All that does not serve must now be left behind.
Freedom lives within yourself.
We are all children of the light.
Those who care for me will know where to find me.
Everyone else, peace be with you.
He thinks he's like Johnny Cash going into the cave with the bag of amphetamines.
Now this is deep new age QAnon language.
I remember the organizers of the Save Our Children marches calling us all starseeds and lightworkers and refers to this belief that certain humans have significant telepathic and psychic abilities due to being descended from or possessed by aliens.
The language seeped over into the official Lonely Instagram account too, suggesting that despite the concerns expressed by staff, Steve was still very much in control.
Supposedly, Steve and Helene have now left New Zealand and travelled to the United States, apparently to open a store in Los Angeles.
However, the authors note that while that store exists physically, it remains unopened and has done so for months, but there might well be another reason they're there.
After Steve posted about COVID-19 being fake, the mosque shootings being planned by Jacinda Ardern, and Bill Clinton raping children, the pair posted a photo from the U.S.
This is what two dangerous conspiracy theorists rejected by friends and family for opposing the New World Order living in love look like.
According to Steve, the photo was taken at Mount Shasta, located at the southern end of the Cascade Range in Siskiyou County, California.
Mount Shasta is synonymous with the Starseed movement.
Quote, it is widely believed that there are civilizations of highly evolved beings residing within the mountain.
Some are believed to be in another dimension that are not currently visible.
Writes website Starseed Gatherings.
They're being like exposed to deadly disease because this motherfucker thinks he's a starseed like fighting the MWO.
Yeah, it's like really like just like frightening combination of just kind of like radicalization and kind of following these kooky beliefs and also this person has like complete power over you, right?
So according to the article, some of Steve's friends and acquaintances revealed that he was allegedly focused on the date of December 21st 2020, which many in the Starseed belief system thought to be the beginning of something called the Age of Light.
A website called Mount Shasta Spiritual Tours announced a live broadcast on this date in which attendees could...
Receive activations from our Star Families and the Ascension Flame within the Ascended Masters Retreat inside Mount Shasta.
We will be connecting to these fifth dimensional frequencies.
It's the Star of Bethlehem, a connection to the Birth of Light.
We are all coming together fully supported by our Star Families and the Ascended Masters.
It's the Star of Bethlehem, a connection to the Birth of Light.
Join me as we change the world together during this portal.
This will be a live stream for $21.
So obviously this date has been and gone by now.
And although I certainly don't feel like any new age of light has dawned, I am admittedly not a descendant of 5th or even 4th dimensional beings.
Similarly, as anyone who follows QAnon or its related beliefs by now well knows, veiled prophecies are really just part of the package and very rarely seem to wake people up.
So we wanted to talk to the writers of this piece to see where this story went next.
And very luckily, David Farrier agreed.
David Farrier is a journalist and filmmaker.
He's behind such documentaries as Tickled and the series Dark Tourist.
Welcome to the show, David.
It's so nice to be here.
We're big fans of your work, so we were just discussing this kind of new phase that QAnon has entered where ideas that may no longer be labeled as QAnon by people sharing them or even believing them have trickled up, obviously, through the population, and since we know it has nothing to do with either power or money in terms of whether you're willing to believe this stuff, now we have pilled bosses, the age of pilled bosses who will, you know, kind of change labor practices based on their belief that they're starseeds or entering a 5D QAnon world.
Bosses didn't need to get worse.
It's already not a contentious relationship.
That's such an interesting point, and it's frustrating in a way that people that are clearly influenced by QAnon, they won't label it that way, and they may not know that they're being influenced by that thing.
So when you come at them saying, Did you find that a lot with the people you spoke to?
sort of get that through to them they'll say no we're just sort of peace-loving hippies that want to live in a more healthy aligned way and so instantly your the language is kind of at loggerheads and you get nowhere.
Did you find that a lot with the people you spoke to that you had to do a dance with them?
Yeah absolutely I think it was a really strange story to get into because people at Lonely Lingerie and people sort of surrounding the chiropractor, you start talking about QAnon and none of them know what you're talking about and they're instantly defensive.
So just trying to explain the backstory of perhaps why their boss is behaving in this way To make it make sense to them, to then open up the other conversations we had for the piece.
It was a very confusing dance to do, which I'm sure you guys are all very used to the language around this stuff, because I feel like every rally you're at, you're attempting to talk about QAnon with a bunch of people that refuse to say that's what it is.
Oh, I mean, we can just thank Q for the drop.
They just gave him the line.
There is no QAnon.
Now, that's all I ever hear when it gets thrown their way.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think, you know, something with, I think, conspiracy theories in general, and definitely QAnon, and before the Capitol riots especially, a big line, I think, anyone that writes or works in this space is, is that, what's the damage?
You know, who cares if people believe in this stuff?
What I found so interesting about Lonely is that it was this really clear example of how it can affect people in the real world.
It's not just ideas, it's ideas that then translate into not getting the correct safety gear when there's a pandemic happening.
Or it takes a brand down into the gutter because, you know, they've built themselves up on empowering people who are marginalized and then suddenly when people try and talk about issues around that, suddenly they're being muted and their comments are being cancelled and it's just a terrible look.
So this Lonely story really struck me in that it was such a clear-cut example of how these fuzzy bad ideas can trickle down into the workplace and actually be incredibly damaging.
Yeah, and damaging in a way that isn't just domestic terrorism, because that's when people say, well, what is the damage?
People will say, well, they're expecting some sort of big mass casualty event, and that's the only thing that they think is worth concerning about, when obviously there are other sort of quieter kinds of damage that are still very destructive to workers and society generally that are worth being concerned about.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, Lonely is this, you know, of all the fashion labels in New Zealand and all the brands, this was the last one that I think anyone expected to go in this direction because they've been, you know, incredibly, I guess, left-leaning and open and empowering to people.
All the things that you wouldn't typically expect to go down this particular, although I'm saying this in hindsight, it's maybe the exact type of Brand that would go down that direction, you know, seeing the way Hugh's gone.
Annie was mentioning in her script that this is something that for researchers has become more clear over the last two years, essentially, this new connect.
And we've been doing a lot of episodes that just either accidentally or purposefully cover this aspect.
Yeah, there's kind of I think we call it like people have called it like pastel QAnon where it kind of dips into this sort of kind of new age spirituality stuff.
It's certainly here in the UK I think like one of the most prominent styles of QAnon that have like really Like, translated over, as it were.
Yeah, David, thanks so much for this piece.
I, like, could not stop reading it.
I was just, like, fascinated by all the, kind of, little details that you found.
Like, not just relating, I think, to, like, yeah, Stephen Helene, but, like, exactly how these, kind of, what seemed like just, kind of, kooky social media posts play out on their workers and their, kind of, yeah, sort of, eventually, kind of, descending into this, kind of, like, retreat to Mount Shasta, right?
Yeah, it's a real journey.
Why does everybody have to go inside a mountain?
This is amazing.
Are they doing, like, Lord of the Rings?
Is he going there with a ring to forge it?
It was sort of a bizarre evolution to watch, and I think part of what set this off is that Here in New Zealand, unlike the rest of the world, when COVID hit, we took it incredibly seriously straight away.
And pretty quickly, in March, we went into a Level 4 lockdown, which was essentially, you don't go out except for essential services.
You're in your bubble.
And that went on for a month, and you couldn't go to work unless you're in a central service, and so suddenly kids were in at school, they're at home.
And I think what happened, you know, you've got Lonely, who's this, you know, hard-working little fashion label, and suddenly the two founders are suddenly told by the New Zealand government that, no, you've got to go home and work from home.
And I imagine suddenly they've got their kids at home, they're having to deal with all that, It's an incredibly stressful environment to be in, I imagine, if you're trying to run a business.
And so that sort of kicked off ideas that had probably been percolating for a while, that the New Zealand government was exerting all this power and control over the population, and they resented this.
And so I think that New Zealand's reaction to the pandemic for lonely, I think, was the thing that really pushed them into hyperdrive, because you had this example of what Essentially what, you know, QAnon is constantly talking about, which is, you know, government and the big cabal, you know, controlling all of us and what we do and how we live our lives.
And so I think that put them down the rabbit hole pretty quickly.
And then you had this dichotomy between their personal Facebook pages where they were, you know, Steve was posting the most extreme things like, you know, our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is a Transgender cabal elitist who eats children.
Um, right through to the brand side, which was coming through in slightly more mellow ways.
And then, and then eventually translating into, um, the more spiritual side of things and star seeds, which is when they set off to, to Mount Shasta.
So I, I mean, even talking about it, I sound a little bit bonkers because it's such a hard thing to distill the evolution of where that goes.
But essentially what I'm saying is the lockdown in New Zealand was such factor in, I think, pushing them really heavily into this belief system.
It was a really unique thing, I think, New Zealand had.
Right.
And, you know, if you're mad at the government, and you're, you know, for shutting down your business, and then you're also stuck at home, and you're online, and, you know, that's where your interests are, I mean, you are going to be led to QAnon or QAnon Lite sort of ideology.
I would love to see these people's YouTube usage, like how much it went up from before and after.
It would be fascinating to get data about specifically YouTube, because I think that's where a lot of these people are finding Plandemic, which is one of the things that these two posted.
When there's so much content, I mean, there's so much, like, sort of spiritual content on YouTube now is, you know, ends up kind of leaning sort of like right-wing extremism that even if you're kind of a spiritual person, like, it's really hard to find spiritual stuff on YouTube especially that doesn't also include elements of the New World Order or, you know... Or that won't trigger that as, like, the next thing in your YouTube... Right, exactly.
...suggestions.
Yeah, and I think they...
Together.
And then I think also forming this relationship with this chiropractor and getting staff to go along to him as well.
I think, I mean, I feel, you know, and I don't have solid data on this, but I feel like Craig was definitely in the more spiritual realm.
And he also had a practice that was suddenly in lockdown.
And I think the two of them, I think they were really trying to out-guru each other and they were trying to sort of outdo Our insight into the world and I think once you're on that track of thinking that you know better than everyone else and you've got the answers then I think you just get very locked into that insular way of thinking and it just snowballed from there and I think that's when staff that I talked to were becoming concerned because you know they're turning up to work at this fashion label and then it was like oh look you should you know maybe go and see this guy and get some mentorship it'll be really helpful and suddenly they find that they're being
Given these really odd sort of talks about life and the way it works, and sort of then when the pandemic is going on, they're getting sort of more spiritual advice like, go and hug a tree, as opposed to, you know, as opposed to, no, like, it's, we're not going to hug a tree and we shouldn't hug each other.
We should keep our distance and do what we need to do to get this pandemic nailed.
I mean, first, the really positive thing is that I heard from a lot more people within Lonely that were just like, thank god someone has written about this because this workplace has been a nightmare to work for.
Because the last thing you do when you write about a workplace, and people are very passionate about this brand and they've built it up from nothing, is people emailing or calling going, why did you do this?
You've just torn this place to shreds.
Everyone was incredibly grateful.
The other side of it is that you had, I heard from a lot of health and wellness types here in New Zealand who were just fuming.
Amy wrote in, fuck you're a piece of shit.
You don't do any investigating.
You spread bullshit gossip.
You're just like all the other ridiculous liberal lefties who like to follow the leader.
Why should a little lingerie brand virtual signal at a posting about BLM?
So a lot of that kind of stuff.
But they fucking built their brand on virtue signaling.
I'm sorry, but you don't get to have it both fucking ways.
Yeah, exactly.
And then we had some people writing from other publications in New Zealand in the health and wellness space saying that it was terrible reporting.
What damage is this doing?
Why would you tear down your own people?
We heard from a lot of health and wellness people that still, when it was outlined in a really clear way about what the damage was from this belief system, Still didn't understand what the problem was.
And I think you run into that quite a bit in this area when you write about what the problem is, that it just goes right over people's heads if you're deep in that world, right?
So a question that I have, which it's very possible because I sort of got the sense reading this piece that maybe it's literally because they're literally going into a mountain, but the sense that Steve and Helene are sort of going underground somewhat, and that it's getting a bit harder to sort of grasp where they're kind of headed next.
Annie, they've adopted hundreds of mole children.
They are now parents to an entire colony of children who don't have eyes.
They live inside the mountains.
No, I mean, yeah, totally.
Where are they, right?
Especially since, yeah, you mentioned something about how, yeah, Steve's really focused on the date of December the 20th.
And I was like, Did that happen?
Is that a failed prophecy?
Or does the Starseed system believe that that has happened and we're in a new era now?
I think we're definitely in the new era.
No aliens came down or ascended from the mountain.
But as far as I know, they are still, the pair of them, in the United States.
They have this store that they are wanting to open on Malrose.
I don't know if that will happen or not, but I mean, the company itself is in a pretty bad shape.
I think 10 people from head office have left now.
Their senior management's mostly gone.
A lot of staff have resigned.
So, you know, this is really, you know, they've taken some damage from this new belief system that they have.
Uh, so where it goes from here, it's like a bit of a mystery.
They're not back in New Zealand yet.
They're sort of, there are, I assume, some staff still working there, like pushing things along.
They've changed their website from .com to .earth, which is very star-seedy.
And they sent out a newsletter about a week ago now saying that the best way to sort of push ahead is to get into a thing called grounding which is essentially grounding yourself to the earth, hugging a tree, lying down on the ground.
They put a link into a website which took you through to a website shop where you could buy products to help with your grounding so it's not just simply enough to lie down on the grass or touch a tree, which is a very pleasant thing to do.
I like doing that sort of thing myself sometimes.
But you know, special shoes, special mats, special clothing just to really get your energy going right.
That's, and all their limits on Instagram, all their comments on Instagram are limited now.
So they're sort of definitely going more earthy, shutting down any kind of criticisms around everything they're doing.
And it'll just be interesting to see whether they survive through all this somehow.
Because, you know, a lot of people out there have no idea that their favorite empowering lingerie brand that this is behind it and this is how they were treating staff.
Barbie Ferreira, an actor, when the story came out, did an Instagram story saying how shocked she was, and that she, you know, because she was one of the people that modeled their stuff, probably for free, because that's the kind of brand this was.
You wanted to model them, you wanted to put the word out.
So she came out and said, no more for me.
But I think in a bigger picture, I don't know if people really I don't know about this, and I think there's probably a lot of people still buying Lonely Lingerie that don't know what the company now stands for.
Yeah.
Your next story is definitely going to be an investigative piece on the two Jenners and how they're actually super excited.
They're buying the company, they're opening new locations, they love the new direction.
Yeah, I mean, everyone modeled for these guys, like Lena Dunham was one of their models, the Jenners, like it's such...
Like, this is such a powerful brand, and it's just so deeply unusual, the direction it's gone in.
And I think people that worked on it are just, like, incredibly sad, because this is something that was built into something really special, and for it to now represent a company that shuts down any discussion around Black Lives Matter, or thinks our Prime Minister is part of the cabal and drinks the blood of children, that's pretty, it's a bummer, you know?
Can you explain to me though David like how someone who makes you know reputable mainstream documentaries about tickling fetishes has a show called dark tourist how did you.
How did you find our little part content margin how did how did you end up in Q and on and and I'm sorry I apologize.
But how did you end up in our neck of the woods?
Are you finding the water to be of the right temperature for you?
Are you going to be making more stuff about this?
No, the temperature's good.
No, I mean, it's funny because I've been listening to your podcast for a long time now, and when I started hearing from staff at Lonely about what was going on about this, I was like, this is amazing.
I cannot believe this brand and QAnon have somehow I don't know, it's a really fascinating space and it's just constantly evolving.
I mean, every time you think this whole QAnon movement is going to stop or finally have an end, it just morphs into something else and it's gotten to this point now where it's just about these big Ideas that have been grounded in so much conspiracy theory culture, these giant ideas that can just fit any narrative in any place.
And it's just gonna march on and on and on.
I mean, I hate it.
I hate all of it.
But it is endlessly fascinating at the same time.
Because I think, I don't know, my hot take on the whole thing is, as a society, we've abandoned Religion, which was this thing that we all used to, once upon a time, love.
And these big, silly ideas just fill all that space.
They give us this wonderful thing that makes us feel like we've got all the answers.
You just fit all these little bits of story to your own personal life and your own narrative.
And it makes life more fulfilling, I assume.
But it's just all such a bummer because it's all complete fabricated bullshit.
It's a really strange way to spend your life, just talking and thinking about things that are not real.
I think the Lonely Lingerie story is really fascinating in this in this regards because it's it's essentially a kind of shining a light on something else, which is that people are increasingly attempting to offer spirituality or kind of confound the workplace with spirituality in some way.
And so then, yeah, then you're at the whims of whatever your fucking boss was watching on YouTube or whatever.
But we are, I think, increasingly seeking spiritual solace in our ever-increasing work hours, where it's just like you're never offline and it's like, great, well then let's also do meditation together, let's do group therapy.
Do you think that this kind of weird thing where someone who wants you to behave a certain way, to work as long and hard as possible, that they would also be purveyors of spirituality, spiritual belief or whatever?
Yeah, I mean, it makes sense to me.
I mean, it's giving a workplace a lifestyle and it's giving it something that you all get behind.
And I think that sort of, in some ways, I suppose it can unify everyone and bring everyone closer together.
But I think it's also incredibly, you know, not everyone that works at a workplace wants to be sent off to a guru.
Or told this is what you need to tell staff.
I mean for people at lonely stores it was incredibly frustrating for them because suddenly their Instagram account, which was prior to this, just like posting wonderful people in their wonderful product and that's it.
Suddenly they're having captions that are talking about Starseed content, so they're having people come into the store and say to them, Because, you know, they've come in there because of Instagram, wanting to have conversations like, what did this mean when you're talking about this rainbow doing this thing?
And so it's incredibly disorientating just for these poor staff that are having to deal with customers.
And at one point, Steve gave them a little screed of what to say to people and what to explain to people.
And for one staff member, that was a step too far because it's like, no, I'm not going to sell your cult, whatever this fucking thing is.
I'm not going to sell this to these customers that just come in wanting to buy a fucking bra.
Like, that's not what I signed up for.
Yeah, the next step is just, like, I printed up some Q-drops on some A4 paper, you'll be handing one out with every bra, you know?
It's like this bizarro version of, like, when I worked in retail, they would want us to, like, pitch the credit card, you know?
Like, when people, like, you know, came up to the thing, and I hated doing it, and I can't even imagine if somebody gave you a script about, you know, fifth-dimensional light and beings, but...
But how cool would it be?
You're trying to check out with like underwear and they're like, are you interested in becoming a 5D ascended being?
Is there a fee?
Is there a fee for that?
$21 YouTube.
No, but I think David, you hit on something.
You know, you have this company.
They are well loved.
They are respected.
They are getting boosted by huge celebrities.
They are being congratulated and celebrated for their ideology and their branding.
And it's not enough.
So once they're at home and they realize the spiritual emptiness of lording over these people, of having a big brand, of making money, of fame, of Instagram followers.
Yeah, there was nothing left and they had to listen to their children for the first time all day.
Of course, you're like, you know what?
My brand doesn't mean anything.
I will burn it to the ground.
I don't care about my employees.
Because it wasn't worth it.
Yeah.
And I mean, the thing is, they think they are doing the right thing.
I guess from their perspective, they think they've got the right answers and they want to share this with people.
I don't even think they're doing it cynically.
I think it's very... they think they're helping everyone.
But that's fine, David, but even if they think that they're doing the right thing, they haven't done the right thing in the past if it would harm their brand.
Suddenly, they're willing to do something they think is the right thing that will also destroy their brand, which is where it becomes More confounding because it shows that they've lost the ability to, you know, just be careful about that kind of stuff.
Just a basic brand manager shit.
Basic CEO shit.
Don't destroy your company's image.
But they've successfully done exactly that.
In this sense, they're trading what they see as the spiritual for the physical.
They're like, fuck the followers, fuck- And it is, in a way, spiritually, it makes sense.
But because capitalism isn't at all a spiritual realm, and their company had nothing spiritual about it, it was actually just a financial structure that had, you know, employees and labor laws and all of these real things, they- It's like, fuck it.
I mean, I half believe these fuckers thought they were gonna ascend to 5D at Mount Shasta, and they wouldn't have to worry about any of this shit!
And also, for me, I think it's made a lot of people reflect on what they even stood for in the first place, and look at that a little bit more cynically, because they built up an entire brand on having people of colour as models, and people of different body sizes and shapes as models, and that was seen as this really empowering, genuine thing.
But when you suddenly find that the same company doesn't want to have any discussion around Black Lives Matter, or enter into any of that, When they built their entire brand up on those bodies, then it sort of makes you look at their mindset for everything they've done.
And that's unfortunate because, you know, that was something really special that they'd built, but even that was maybe bullshit and just something to, as you say, because it's commerce, they just want to sell clothes at the end of the day, you know?
So they've ascended now, and they're in the volcano, and we wish them well.
Folks, we wish them so well in the volcano.
We hope they find what they really, you know, at least shoot a cool documentary, like a Herzog-style piece about, you know, the dangers of self-immolation.
There is nothing I would have liked more than to be able to go over to Mount Shasta and do some filming over there because, like, just physically having a mountain there, having this community there, This big event, just being with them before and after that, I would have loved to have been on the ground with them.
But we can all dream.
We can all dream.
Yeah, so please answer his calls.
Please, please answer his calls from the volcano.
If the internet connection there is decent.
I hear they have fiber laid into the core of the volcano so they can still watch YouTube at the highest possible speed.
They can have 12 videos going at once.
They're in there like in a fucking geodome of YouTube videos on Mount Shasta.
Alright, well David, thank you so much.
It was such a great time talking to you.
We love your work.
Where can people find you and your work?
Um, I write mostly on Webworm, which is a newsletter I send out.
That's just webworm.co, or it's just my name, David Farrer.
You're on Twitter and Instagram and the like.
And yeah, I write a bit about conspiracy theories and tickling and dark tourism and all sorts of things.
So no, big fan, thanks for having me on the show and I do hope that, you know, I hope that Steve and Helene do come out the side of this and maybe don't go deeper because there's still a chance to kind of save this brand and that would be nice but as you guys probably know it's pretty difficult to get out once you're in.
Yeah.
This seems like a one-way street, and the stuff they've been posting is increasingly unhinged.
So thanks again, and thanks Annie for writing the episode and for overseeing our lingerie talk to make sure that we don't do or say anything naughty.
Yeah, thank you Annie.
Keeping it OPG.
Thanks you guys.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
If you want a second episode every week and access to our archives, you can go to patreon.com slash QAnonAnonymous and subscribe for five bucks a month.
Streams happen on twitch.tv slash QAnonAnonymous.
You can also find me, Julian Field, on Twitch with two E's and Liv Posting is also on Twitch.
Our website is QAnonAnonymous.com for everything else.
Listener, until next week, may the Deep Dish bless you and keep you.
It's not a conspiracy, it's a fact.
And now, today's Auto-Tune.
Most of the 8Koon users that are at least in this interview, they seem like normal people and they weren't dropping F-bombs every five seconds.
But the three homosexuals that he interviewed there in their pad that were like QAA, the Q Anonymous Anonymous people or whatever, they were like dropping f-bombs every five seconds and swearing and cursing and like real potty mouths.
I was shocked and surprised.
The QAA guys, it's like Travis Yu and... What's his name, Mike Rothschild?
They were like just making doughy eyes at each other and I can't wait for this interview to be over so we can do some real homo stuff.
