Premium Episode 190: r/conspiracy Time Machine (Sample)
The "r/conspiracy" subreddit serves as a time capsule to track the changes in conspiracy-minded internet posters over the last couple of decades. We visit post-9/11, pre-2016 election, post-QAnon and present day reddit posts in the infamous online community
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Welcome, listeners, to Premium Chapter 190 of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, the Our Conspiracy Time Machine episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Julian Fields, Liv Agar, and Travis View.
Dear listeners, today, Liv and I have stuffed piles upon piles of garbage into Mr. Fusion and have generated the 1.21 gigawatts of power necessary to take us all back in time.
But where are we going?
Perhaps to ancient Egypt where we can each high-five Moses as he parts the Red Sea.
Or maybe to the mighty Colosseum in 180 A.D.
so we can cheer as Russell Crowe decapitates a particularly rude barbarian.
Or better yet, let's set our time circuits to 28 A.D.
so we can watch in awe as Jesus Christ himself turns water into weed.
And we can all get high together.
All tempting possibilities, of course.
But, alas, since our producer, Julian Field, is a stern taskmaster, instead we will be traveling back through the twisted ethernet cords of time to a place on the internet where conspiracy theories were not beholden to a political party, when queue clearance meant nothing other than you had a pretty decent gig within the Department of Energy.
That's right folks, we're going back through Our Conspiracy, the popular conspiracy theory reddit board with almost 2 million concurrent subscribers.
We'll be analyzing posts made during the board's humble beginnings in 2008 and tracking them all the way through to today.
So customize your avatar, load up on reddit gold, and prepare to give Liv and myself as many downvotes as technology allows as we deep dive into the history of Our Conspiracy.
I wanted to go to the October Revolution, but Julian said no.
So we decided to narrow our search into four distinct eras of the message board.
Post 9-11, pre-2016 election, the arrival of QAnon, and what kind of posts are being written in present time today.
Now, the first archived page of our conspiracy dates all the way back to April 1st, 2008, over 14 years ago.
The top posts are a healthy mix of 9-11 conspiracies, as well as general theories about secret societies, such as Skull & Bones and the Illuminati.
One post links to a now-dead YouTube video titled, 9-11 Debunking for Dummies.
The posts are overwhelmingly anti-imperialist, anti-intelligence agencies, and anti-corporate.
There are even two posts warning readers about the dangers of mass surveillance via their cellular phones.
One is a shared Wired article titled, quote, AT&T invents programming language for mass surveillance.
And another post is titled, final total proof that cell phones are government tracking devices.
The beginning of that post reads, From the Don't Ever Call Me Paranoid Again files, The Washington Post reported something remarkable.
Quote, Cell phone tracking powers on request.
An article that plainly states that law enforcement and intelligence agencies routinely track U.S.
citizens through their cell phone's GPS capability.
Please remember that I'm not being alarmist.
I personally accepted the fact I live in a total surveillance police state a while back.
Rather than view that as a prison, I've decided to treat it like a stage.
This is not a crisis.
This is not a nightmare.
This is just the world that you and I happen to live in.
It's not ideal.
Carpe diem, man.
You know, fucking seize the surveilled day.
It is interesting.
I feel like we'll see, like, slowly as the subreddit devolves, like, Less and less of the front page is going to be about actual things in the world that any rational human being would be worried about.
Yeah, everyone gets specialized.
Yeah, exactly.
So here in 2008, we have two of the top posts on our conspiracy linking to Wired and the Washington Post.
This is insane, knowing what the board is now.
So I began to search the archives for snapshots toward the end of 2008 to see how the election of Barack Obama would affect the content of the popular posts.
But even on November 3rd, 2008, a day before the election was held, most posts were still discussing 9-11, sharing the occasional Alex Jones YouTube video, or sharing extraterrestrial sightings and UFO stories.
In the replies to most of the posts, there is a healthy amount of both a willingness to believe as well as skepticism.
In a post from late January of 2009 titled, quote, Nibiru slash Planet X photos from January 2008, the top reply cast doubt on the idea that a secret planet is barreling towards Earth.
So Travis, will you read Scientologist 2?
He says, story from January 2008.
Surely it would be much brighter in the sky now.
Simply put, Planet X cannot exist as described unless it violates natural laws.
Violates natural laws equals supernatural.
Or it's the Borg planet, etc.
I am not holding my breath.
Or it's the Borg planet, etc.
So listen, I'm a reasonable man.
I can allow the possibility of a Borg planet.
But otherwise, this is a ludicrous tale.
You have been listening to a sample of a premium episode of QAnon Anonymous.
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