“The Tsuki Project” was a once-active community of likeminded 4chan anons who longed to be transported into a better world. And they believed that by participating in this community formed around the promises and lore of someone named Tsuki, they could enter into this better world after they died.
This is a community that first formed in 2017 and has since dissipated into the online ether. It’s hard to say what the Tsuki Project was exactly. It has been described as anime suicide cult, a digital version of Heaven’s Gate, a hoax, a piece of interactive fiction, an Alternate Reality Game, or just a group of lonely, depressed people who were sucked into one person’s maladative daydreams. It was probably a swirl of all of those things.
What exactly happened has to be pieced together from archived imageboard posts, websites that only survive as zip files, anime Wikis, and leaked screenshots from Discord servers.
This is the story of the Tsuki project based on the surviving records.
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Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe, Jake Rockatansky, and Corey Klotz. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)
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QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Welcome to the QAA Podcast Premium Episode 278, The Tsuki Project.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakitansky, Liv Agar, and Travis View.
Today, we're going to dive into an old-fashioned internet rabbit hole.
That is the Tsuki Project, which is also known as System Space.
This is a once active community of like-minded anonymous 4chan users who longed to transport into a better world.
And they believe that by participating in this community formed around the promises and lore of someone named Suki, they could enter into this better world after they died.
So, this community has long since dissipated into the online ether, and it's hard to say what the Suki project was exactly.
It has been described as an anime suicide cult, a digital version of Heaven's Gate, a hoax, a piece of interactive fiction, an alternate reality game, or just a group of lonely, depressed people who are sucked into one person's maladaptive daydreams.
It was probably a swirl of all of those things.
Now, what exactly happened has to be pieced together from archived image board posts, websites that only survive as zip files on the dark web, anime wikis, and leaked screenshots from Discord servers.
You know, they say that the internet is forever, but in truth, some things on the internet are actually, you know, are harder to piece together than some things that happened many, many years ago.
Yeah, like, chat GBT dribble is forever.
But, like, whatever went on on some Discord in 2017, that is lost.
And many people are probably very happy to hear that as well, I'm sure.
Yeah, our ancestors had to, like, chip away at stone and, like, use fine brushes to sort of pull apart the sand to see images, you know, etched in tablets.
And we have to piece together broken Discord links, blurry JPEGs, tiny pieces of online chatbots.
I mean, we've come a long way.
You have to go through a 4chan archive search that sends you to, like, ten chatterbait websites, even though you have Adblock on it.
Oh, yeah.
The second you click on it.
Also, yeah, just miserable search function.
Like, four plebs is just miserable to navigate and search through.
I imagine, I think it's Matt Dillon at the beginning of The Fifth Element, where, like, the aliens are walking by and he's, like, sketching them horrified, but, like, our situation, like, sketching just...
Like, horribly, like, racist posts.
Anti-Semitic shit.
So, I think the story of the Suki Project is interesting for anyone who, you know, is really compelled to learn more about online cults or Chan culture, but it's also a story that made me personally reflect on why I was initially attracted to, like, early forms of social media as a young boy and a teen in the 90s, you know?
I like the idea that you could, like, drop into, like, a local BBS server or a Usenet group about, like, you know, any topic you're interested in.
Like, for example, I really like The Simpsons.
I didn't know anyone who wanted to talk about The Simpsons, but there was a Usenet group full of people who were more obsessed with The Simpsons than I was.
And there were obviously, they were clearly adults and they understood references that I didn't get.
You know, I felt like it was enriching my experience.
And, you know, discovering that and discovering, like, there's just this large community of people who had the kind of, like, same kind of, like, mind like me was very validating.
Yeah.
I feel like we've hit a critical mass of that now, where it's like, if you want to, like, fuck toasters or whatever, you'll be able to find a community.
Like, there must have been some point where it was good enough.
All the reasonable hobbies and communities, you can find someone, it'll enrich your life.
And then it gets to a point where it's like, no, maybe there shouldn't be communities of people encouraging each other to fuck toasters.
See, I didn't know that you could do that on the internet when I was a teenager.
And had internet in the house for the first time.
I basically understood, like, America Online, like, chat room, you know, chat rooms and instant messages.
And before that, it was prodigy chat rooms, essentially.
And then, like, in the later years, like, yeah, downloading, like, maybe, like, one pixelated image of pornography.
Like, I didn't know that there were forums where you could go and, like, discuss, like, you know, specific topics.
As far as I was concerned, that part of the internet didn't exist to me.
It was just going into chat rooms and being like, hey, and pretending to be an older person.
Sometimes a police officer or something.
Just something that I thought was cool.
Too much information?
No, no, no, no.
No, no, that's a good, you know, perspective.
I just didn't realize that there was, like, forums where it was like, oh, I could go to, like, I didn't know that there probably would have been, like, a Ghostbusters forum where I could go talk about Ghostbusters with like-minded people when I was a teenager with access to the internet.
Yeah.
That's very easy.
Like, everyone knows, everyone who would be into that probably already knows they can, like, Google in some community.
Yeah, people know what the internet does now, whereas, like, when, like, Travis and I, like, first, when I first got it in my house, like, we didn't know the extent of it.
What it was able to do.
I remember showing it to my grandfather.
We were like, this is the internet.
You can connect to it.
You can ask it questions and stuff.
We had maybe an Ask Jeeves browser.
And he was like, really?
And I was like, yeah, what do you want to know?
And he was like, Google Jewish basketball players from 1923. That's what he wanted to know.
What Jews had played basketball professionally?
I feel like we hit a critical mass in relation to that.
Which has resulted in...
Any year olds knowing what QAnon is?
The Suki project began on the 4chan board, R9K. So, this is probably, I would say, it's the third most notorious board on 4chan.
So, yeah, the original board is also probably the most famous and notorious.
It's the B-board, Random, which is, like, you know, known for being this chaotic, vulgar, and sometimes creative laboratory of internet memes.
And the second most famous probably is the Poll Board, Birthplace of Q, some other insider and non's also a famous sort of like gathering place of like, you know, the internet far right.
But the culture of R9K is based around shared alienation of its users.
The board was originally developed to test a piece of moderation software called Robot 9000, but it evolved into a home for sharing painful anecdotes from socially awkward 4chaners who self-deprecatingly call themselves robots.
My understanding is the difference between R9K and B is that on R9K you can't make the same post that someone else has already made.
So, you know, on B, they'll have, like, this is a thread, and you remake the thread continually, but you can't have that.
Okay, so it has to be some new weird shit that no one has said before.
And that's how they eventually got to this religion.
Yeah, eventually.
You know, it's monkeys typing on a typewriter.
Posts on R9K are frequently made from young men and occasionally young women who express frustration about, you know, the hurdles of getting romantic attention, making friends generally, or finding fulfilling work.
They romanticize the life of the NEET, the N-E-E-T. That's an acronym for Not in Education, Employment, or Training.
They talk about, like, getting neat bucks to live a life of isolation, pursuing solo hobbies, playing video games, watching anime, and consuming pornography.
They often feel like society has rejected them, and their pain is expressed in existential terms.
They convince themselves that their future only holds rejection and tedious, low-paying labor, so they wonder if there's any point in trying to better their lot.
In other words, it's full of people who believe that they have nothing to lose in life, and consequently, it's full of people who are very receptive to the idea that there's a simple way to exit this world and enter another.
You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA podcast.
For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.com slash QAA. Travis, why is that such a good deal?
Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month.
For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes.
Plus all of our miniseries.
That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian and Annie.
10 episodes of Perverts with Julian and Liv.
10 episodes of The Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad.
Plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis View.
It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting.
Travis, for once, I agree with you.
And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QAA. Well, that's not an opinion.
