The Escherian Stairwell

We are joined by filmmaker Michael Lacanilao to discuss disinformation and the RIT Escherian Stairwell: Building a Modern Myth project.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Podcast, Thank you. That is it is, It's true. It's true.
Actually it could happen here listening to the podcast. That

(00:26):
is more or less the truth we have. We have
Dreg Robert out of bed at before their crack of
dawg at a legend forty two am. Um, and we're
gonna talk about actually something very fun. I've been I've
been wanting to talk about this for a long time
because this is one of actually one of my favorite things.
Um yeah, yeah, So I'm gonna I'm gonna tell a

(00:47):
bit of a bit of a little story regarding one
of my act all time favorite events and topics. So
back in like, there was this a cheesy little online
university sign show made by the Rochester Institute of Technology
called can You Imagine um. The The idea was to
highlight some of the cool and weird things at the

(01:09):
university UM in part to promote the Imagine r i
T Festival, which was like the school's annual like innovation
and creativity festivals think that they put on. So yeah, today,
I want to talk specifically about episode three of the
web series because the contents of which overlap with some
of my like artistic interests. UM and like just my

(01:30):
love of illusions and paradox and I will kind of
tie into some topics we are we always discussed in
the show. So yeah, episode three one of probably probably
the most interesting episode UM. Episode three opens with the
hosts Kevin and Steph as they like stand awkwardly in
a gloriously dated, you like university film set, like it's

(01:50):
it's it's it's only twenties, it's only twenty thirteen, but
it was like obviously like made in the nineties, like
like like like the set's like it's it's all it's
it's all very dated. What specific Oh, like they're they're
like they're just like weird, like like weird, like like
dadd science stuff on the walls. All the hosts of
wearing like dorky orange T shirts like like over to

(02:13):
over top of their regular clothes. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
it's all. It's all that kind of it's all that
kind of stuff. So like dorkey orange T shirts with
the letters r I T for Roger CRUs Sister Institute
of Technology UM. Of course, because everything in this online
video series is perfect. Kevin is wearing his shirt over
top of like a button down it's it's, it's, it's great. Um.

(02:35):
The first fifty seconds of the video are taken up
with like plugging the upcoming r A T Imagine Festival
with a with a co host Steph beautifully stumbling over
her lines when she says the events catchphrase, it's where
the left brain and the right brain collide. And it's great.
It's it's, it's, it's, it's it's perfect. So after all

(02:56):
the plugs and the vamping, the hosts get down to
the fun engineer ring feet and they'll be showing us today,
which is a neat little architectural experiment a part of
the r I T campus called the A Sharing and
Stairwell UM, of course, named after the impossible staircases depicted
in Dutch artist mc Escher's artwork. So the video cuts

(03:16):
two from the little like sound stage they're filming in
to this boring, white, seemingly typical stairwell. Our host Kevin
ascending a flight of the gray concrete stairs. UM explains
that what located in Building seven of the campus. The
stairwell was designed by Filipino architect Raphael Nelson Avagando and
was one of the first structures put up when our

(03:38):
I T moved their campus from downtown Rochester to the
more suburban Henrietta. UM when when he's taking when he's
reaching the top of the stairs, he turns the quarter
and then suddenly seems to appear at the bottom of
the lower flight of stairs, leading up to the landing
that he just left from, all while continuing to talk
about the architect behind this like kind of weird impossible
feat um. So, as Kevin walks back up the camera,

(04:00):
he says that the stairwell was built in the eight
and it's been wowing r I two students ever since. Um,
it's it is very cool. It's like it's like you're like, okay,
like you get you get the little like like you
get the little architectural trick that they're doing. Um, but
it's it is it is still pretty fun to see.
Before episode three of Can You Imagine aired you Can

(04:22):
you can already find a few articles on the school's
UH website about the issuing stairwell, along with some like
forum posts debating how the architecture in the stairwell works
to like achieve the effect. Um Also floating around on
YouTube was like a random segment of what looked like
a like a PBS style late nineties documentary about the

(04:44):
physics and architecture of the school and specifically the stairwell
that interviewed some like professors um and some like architects
and like a symphysicist kind of discussing what like how
to like bring paradox into the physical world. Yeah but
but but but around the time and the can You
Imagine episode aired now, like infamous r RT stairwell was
mostly unknown, so like even despite it being very interesting,

(05:08):
no one really knew about it until this episode of
this little web series air Um. The little web episode
dedicates around half its time to interview students, uh and
righteously random people at the university about if they even
know about the stairwell's existence um, and if they do,
what like experiences they have with like messing around with

(05:28):
like the looping architecture, because yeah, you can, you can
you know, you can play a lot of games with
this type of with this type of design. Uh. So
the rest of the short video like tries to demonstrate
the disorienting ascent down and descent back up via the
camera in various ways, like you know, like human chains
or holding hands around the weird like rubious loop types

(05:49):
staircase then like passing objects back and forth in a
circle while inside and around the enclosed stairwell. Um, there's
one where Kevin walks around with a cup to show
that the stairs aren't like clearly like heavily slanted, like
the water stays pretty pretty level as he walks all
the way through, and like we follow with him the
entire time. Um. So yeah, Like the overall like nerdy

(06:09):
and low fi style of the University video match with
like the insane feet of architectural illusion is a really
fun mixed like it's like it's like it's it's it
is very like surreal, but not totally on purpose, because
it's just all of these like regular college students showing
this like really cool architecture by this really good architect
and you're like, oh yeah, they're just like so chill

(06:31):
about it. Um, it is it is. It is pretty fun.
It's pretty fun. Um. After the third episode of the
Imagine Our i T video was posted, finally the mind
boggling looping staircase of building seven in of our T
started to gain a lot of confused appreciation. UM and

(06:51):
the dorky University Science show went vital. People started traveling
from out of state even other countries to see the
Asherian stairwell themselves of and film videos on social media
as as they walked through it. There this this one
video of like people traveling to a different country and
they're like harassing like the school staff to try to
like tell them where it is, and they're like, oh
my god, you're still doing this because it was like

(07:14):
because like this film was this video is like like
years old, but it's it still happens. People still travel
there to to specifically see it. Um. There is like
tense online discussion and debate on how the Filipino architect
Raphael Avugando was able to achieve the effect and what
kind of other bizarre architectural experiments he may have worked on,
because you can find his Facebook page and you can

(07:34):
find some stuff about him, but he has not really
because like this this steroile was built in the late sixties,
but you haven't you, So he even though he has
an online presence, he's like he's like he's not like active,
so it's unclear like what else he's actually been doing. Um,
but I would I would, I would love to learn
more about this architect and what else he's done because
this it is it is really rare to have these

(07:56):
very small, condensed but like high effort type like type builds,
and like the the existence of the whole thing. Posted
some really interesting questions around how extremely clever paradoxical design
can push the boundary of how we make assumptions about
spatial physics UM, and how we visually and physically demonstrate
things that we usually can only depict in two dimensions,

(08:18):
right like you can you can easily depict the the
issuing in stairwell in two dimensions, but when you're scaling
that up to three dimensions, it's obviously more works like
like that. That is that is part of the paradox um.
Plus you know, it also demonstrates the importance of art
and how ideas once thought impossible or merely optical illusions
can actually, with enough datacat effort, break into our real reality. Uh.

(08:39):
If a brilliant architect can manage to build this physically
and like logically impossible structure, what other types of things
can we actually view as possible? Um? The video now
has like over a million views on its original upload.
UM and videos about the r I t stairwell have
ranked up as many as like twenty five million views.
Yeah it's pretty cool. Yeah. You know what else demonstrates

(09:01):
the looping nature of time. Having to listen to all
these ads that we do, ye do we we are
we are back. I've I've rounded the corner and we

(09:22):
are back where we came from. Um because of the
fun paradox of architecture. Um. The one the one other
thing I should mention it before we continue on this
episode is that the entire thing is fake. It's false.
No way, not this time. We created it. Not this time, no,

(09:43):
not this time. It's totally made up. Because of course
it's it's a staircase that breaks the basic girls of
movement in physics. Kevin walks up the stairs and teleports
to the lower stairwell. Belief them this this that's not
that's that's not an architectural allusion. It's called a good video.
And the day and adobe after effects like no, you're

(10:04):
you're really gonna believe a video on the Internet and
some well placed, falsified Internet posts over the very basic
rules that governed our universe. But like, oh boy, did
it fool millions of people? Uh? And if I played
my cards right, I hope most of our listeners until
the last few seconds. Um yeah, and uh so the

(10:26):
whole the whole thing was a was a student like
film and art project around around building a modern myth.
Um the it's because it's sure, It's sure is interesting
how good storytelling can overrule obvious logical processes. The tale
of the is Sharian Stairwell is one of my favorite

(10:46):
case studies and how disinprobation spreads and it's believed while
all in defiance of the basic rules of reality, because
it's not a matter of what facts are true, it's
about what facts are compelling. And the idea of a
logically impossible staircase being built by a brilliant Philippino architect
is more interesting than it being someone's weird and disinformation
art project. Um there. So yeah, Like I want to say,

(11:12):
like how what what were you guys thinking as I
was explaining the Asurian stairwell, Like where did you see
this going? Okay, so I had in the back of
my head, Okay, we should we should mention this. Garrison
has been hyping up this episode for like I don't
even a pretty amount of time nothing, Yeah, and there's

(11:34):
a staircase, and I'm like what what? I was like,
my my brain my brain started going because he said
and I was like my like my encountering surgency brain
flicked on and I was like, wait a second, hold time,
is this like some kind of like weird like we've

(11:55):
redesigned the college campuses so they stop people stopped taking
the dean hostage, a thing that used to happen constantly
and with all my favorite party about this would happen constantly,
and you'd get New York Times articles calling it non violent. Great. Yeah,
so yeah it was that was that was. Yeah. I

(12:15):
spent more mental energy that I probably should have tried
to figure out how it worked out. Was like, I
don't know, maybe they just made it, Like if they
just made it Acus Razor, it's obviously yeah. I mean
I was. I was in the like I was in
the like okay, so they built a staircase, they built
another the viewers cannot see my fingers and it was like,
it's a staircase. It doesn't tell it. It was like

(12:36):
it was like, but you can't find videos of people
traveling to the school to see if it's real. And
they try it and they're so disappointed. They're like, oh, yeah,
it's it's no, it's just stairs. It doesn't it doesn't. Yeah,
it's disappointed in a lot of ways because it's it's
not even like a thing where like there's like another
back staircase that you walked down. Then again it's just
it's just nothing. It's just stas I was hoping there

(12:57):
was like, actually clever thing is No, it's just it's
not really it's it's it's just. It was that meme
where all the math doesn't add up in the person
what is happening? I was like, all right, Garrison, you
got us here. You made Robert get up before noon.

(13:17):
What is happening? Well, the reason, the real reason I
got up before I got Robert up before noon is
because I actually, um have scheduled an interview with the
creator of the Assarian Stairwell, the actual one be like
the online art project and building a modern myth idea um,

(13:37):
which we are now going to segue into. So yeah,
what what follows is us talking with the creator of
the Assarian Stairwell project. Hello, we are we are back

(14:01):
from our probably very very brief break um and with
me along with Robert and Chris and Sophie is Uh Michael,
the creator of the Sharian Stairwell Project and the Building
the Modern Myths Project. Hello greetings, Thank you so much

(14:22):
for joining us to talk about one of my one
of my favorite things actually is which is here a
little to us to project? Um yeah, I've been a
fan of this for a long time and found it
to be really compelling and interesting. Um and I so
I just walked through Robert and Chris and Sophie what

(14:43):
what it what it was, but from the perspective of
it being true for like for the good fifteen minutes,
I was I was episode was going, I was going
through talking about it as if it were completely real,
but curious that it was. It was slightly baffling because
again we were told nothing, and then what we got

(15:05):
is Garrison is talking about a YouTube video about an
architecture thing and I was like what here? Yeah, and
then and then then talking about how oh yeah, and
I guess one more thing is that it's actually fake.
Um and it's part of this whole this whole thing.
So yeah, I would I would love to talk to

(15:26):
you about both, like how how you like logistically like
made the project, but also like the underlying you're wondering
thought thoughts that like inspired you to do in the
first place, and then like retrospected now almost like ten
years later, like how do you view the project as
like happening you know, right before like the peak of
online disinformation? Um? Right, So but first of all, I

(15:49):
just think we should would probably start start at the beginning,
like what what was your inspirations for this type of
like online like very because it seems it seems it
seems built to go viral in a lot of ways. Yes, exactly.
So this was around twenty eleven, I guess was when
I first got the idea. It was for my master's thesis,

(16:09):
my m f A for film at Rochester r I
t and UM. The idea actually began from this like
deep anxiety about how to discern fact from fiction? Um.
At the time, like I came into film school like
really into like realism in films like Romanian new Wave

(16:34):
mckel hanaka dar Dan Brothers. Like these are filmmakers who
are like they're sort of like the modern day version
of Italian nero neo realism, and they're trying to like
depict like these um, reality as it is. I wanted
to like learn how to make those types of films. UM.
So over like with each year, that's what I tried
to get better at. And the more I tried to

(16:58):
do that, UM well, like a number of things were
happening around that time. Right in class, they showed us
that these mockumentaries called No Lies, which was made in
nineteen seventy three by this guy called Mitchell Black actually
won a student oscar at the time, and uh Delusions
and Modern Primitivism two thousand one by this guy named

(17:20):
Daniel Laughlin, UM, and these Like I was like floored
because I thought they were real, like real documentaries and um,
and it bothered me, like our teachers still this afterwards
that these were actually scripted works of fiction with like
really really good actors, and it like I went into

(17:42):
kind of like existential crisis mode afterwards, like how do
I even discern what's true from what's not if I
got fooled by these things, especially like that's like my concentration,
that's what I've been studying for years, and even I
was not even able to tell that they were fake. Right,
There was that going on, and then there was like

(18:02):
smartphones were becoming a thing, Like I just looked it up.
Smartphones didn't start out out selling flip phones still, so
around this time, like it was becoming a thing where
everyone would have the Internet in their pockets. So I
guess there was that anxiety going on trying to think about, um, um,
how we're starting to function and how we're how I

(18:26):
remember when I proposed my thesis, did the thesis committee,
I um, one of the things that I was telling
them was, um, I have this worry about how reliant
we are on the Internet to determine what's true and
what's not. And this is like like my professors found
my concerns like really abstract and theoretical, like why do

(18:49):
you even care? Because this right, Like why did you
about fact and ficture? It wasn't like fake news. That
wasn't even an It wasn't It didn't become part of
the everyday lexicon, like you said, until six when Trump
started throwing that term around and suddenly we hear about
it every day. Um, So there was that going on.

(19:10):
Trayvon Martin was a thing, and for the first time,
like nationally, you could see like disinformation like on you know,
just like exaggerated versions of different different accounts from like
polarizing sides. So all that was going on, and so
I I wanted to it was it was like this

(19:33):
film project was about um trying to take something that
was Are you familiar with with the difference between like
a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge? Yeah? Okay, so
so so like you know, for for anyone who might
be listening that doesn't really know the exact difference. A

(19:54):
priori knowledge is the type of knowledge that you can
have without needing to make observations or conduct experiments or
look at surveys or do any research of any any kind.
Is a sort of knowledge you can know just by
reasoning it out, but just by sitting in a room
by yourself in the dark, you could figure things out.

(20:16):
This is the sort This is a priori knowledge um.
So for an example of that is like knowing that
all bachelor's are unmarried, right, or all triangles of three sides,
that's a priori knowledge. An example of oppos stereori knowledge
um is something that you find out through observation or

(20:36):
you need using one or more of your five senses, right,
Like Joe Biden is the President of the United States. Um,
the masses of Mars is six point four one seven
one times ten to the twys. You actually have to
go out into the world and conduct surveys or do research.
So that's oppos stereo knowledge. So the idea was to

(20:56):
take something that was a priori as something that could
that could um be disproven by reason alone, Like you
wouldn't have You wouldn't need to do any research in
order to to know that it was false. You'd simply
had to reflect on it and um think about it. Uh.

(21:18):
So we could have picked anything, right, we could have.
We could have said made up like a fake news
report that Lee's mathematicians that m I T having invented
like a square with five sides something like that. You know, Um,
I remember that weekend up there in sm now had
this sketch. I think it was like, um, forget who

(21:39):
it was. It might have been Kevin Nealon or something
like that. The report was like scientists and mathematicians have
discovered the new number. The number exists between five and six,
and they're calling it the numbers spleen, you know, something
like that, which is like just impossible. So, um, so
come up with something that could be disproven by reason alone,

(22:02):
and at the same time surrounded with this wealth of
online information UM supporting its veracity. So like you know,
it was kind of a social experiment. So I was like,
have we are we so far beyond rational thinking that
even something that can be disproven a priori people would

(22:23):
believe And it was like, we didn't really know the
answer to that, but we were going to commit to
creating this thing as though it was real and but
which was like logically impossible. So in a way it
anticipated the age of like this information because it wasn't
just Yeah. The thing I kind of alluded to in

(22:43):
my little scripted portion is that like, yeah, it wasn't
just the YouTube video. There was also this extra online
content that was created, um, some of which articles, So yeah, yes,
like there was you can find like articles, forum posts,
all this kind of stuff, like like like if yeah,
like so if you could look into it more and
find these other things, but it's still contradicts the basic
logical processes that we can use to discern what is

(23:05):
real what is not ums, Like yeah, in terms of
like believing in a five seed square, like no, that's
not what that that that's not how like physics and
like spatial like the spatial dimensions work. Um. So yeah,
and then in terms of all the extra material you
filmed for it, because there was like there was like
I think I read around like nine hours of documentary footage.

(23:27):
Was also a lot like a lot of footage, but
it was only made into like probably a thirty minute thing. Um.
We got our friends, like at the very very beginning,
we got our friends to play along with it. Like
so whenever you see posts about this, just comment like
it's real, Like, yeah, I was there. It was really great.
And um, eventually people would actually start visiting the stairwell,

(23:49):
like from all over, like from Canada. They crossed the
border to get there because it's in upstate New York, right, Um.
And I actually ran into a couple from Indie, uh
who happened to be visiting visiting New York, and they
were like, since we're here, we'd like to see this
stare well that sort of thing. Um. Oh no, I know.
I felt really bad for a lot of the visitors,

(24:11):
so we actually had to come up with souvenirs so
that they wouldn't leave empty handed, right, So we made
fake We made postcards like saying I've been to the
Share and stareile and stuff like that program good and
um what happened and the way we explained it. So
a lot of people were really mad actually you know,
as you can imagine when they got there. But after um,

(24:33):
we would explain what we were doing to them with
the project. Like a lot of them actually like started
playing along and thought was really cool, and they went
home with their souvenirs and told their friends that they
just saw this amazing thing. So you know, it kind
of built that way for a little bit. I mean yeah,
because it's it's like telling kids that Santa isn't real exactly,
and then some of them will be like play along

(24:55):
with like okay, cool, this means I can play along
with the myth to help you other kids happy. And
some of will be like, what, oh no, my entire
reality is broken. And when you find out it's your
trying to like pass it on exactly that. So a
lot of that was going on, Like Shack the Basketball
Player posted about it at some point, Joe Rogan talked

(25:17):
about it on his podcast They Got kind of Crazy.
Wait wait, did Joe Rogan know it wasn't real? Um,
it's funny. You should see the clip of him doing it,
because he was like it was him, and who's the
other guy, Bert Kreiser or something. Anyway, they were arguing
about whether or not was really. The other guy was like, no,
it's real, it's so real. Rogan was like, all you

(25:39):
guys are fucking idiots. You're all idiots. Let's google it
right now. They google it and they look up an
article and Joe Joe Rogan's like, Okay, yeah, alright, it's
still fucking stupid. The guy who built it is fucking
you know. I you have You have no idea how
happy you have faced it because I in my in

(26:00):
my research, but like I have like read your thesis.
I read all the lots of articles about this. I
did not come across the rug clip, but I would, right.
Um it's like way back right, it's like ten years ago,
and it's like a lot of stuff to dig through
and I found it though. Again, um, so I'd like
to kind of go into like the logistics of like

(26:21):
actually doing this in terms of like creating all the
fake like web content, but also like you know, dreaming
up this like family friendly science show that's made by
our I t and like how like you know the
thing between like naturalism and realism and making it like
playing not trying to replicate reality, but playing as if
it were reality, and how those those are two different things. Um. Yeah,

(26:44):
well what we wanted to make it as real as possible,
and like that's what I was I'd been studying anyway,
but in like a dramatic context, like making narrative films. Um.
And the idea was to, um, there's this event at
r I t every year which gets a lot of people,
like thirty thousand people a year go to the campus

(27:06):
and look at like, um, these uh whatever the students
are working on. It's kind of like a mini like
festival type of thing. Well, not many is pretty big.
So we just we wanted to make a video for
that event. Um. As though we were promoting the event, Hey,
come see the Assarian stairwell when you get your r
I T UM and you know you normally for these

(27:28):
like for these for these events, if you have a
booth or something, you'll see reservations and you'll see like
four people reserve fifteen people. Like we were like started
getting nervous and we found out we got a sense
that this was gonna be big because like when I
looked at like the reservations for like our non existent
starewell they were like one thousand plus visitors. Um yeah,

(27:53):
I still remember like going to campus that day at
the festival Saturday, and like my friend Ira like comes
up to me, is like, Mike, people want to kill you,
like cover get over here, and I was like trying
to not show my face anyway. Yeah that's what. So
what the way, Like a lot of the legs of
the project was just like word of mouth, I guess,

(28:15):
and we actually ran out of money. Um, we didn't
get to do like the web stuff on the scale
that we wanted to, but it turned out that we
didn't even have to. In fact, like within a few
days or maybe a week or something after the original
video came out, I posted a video explaining that it's
a myth. Like I posted it and I was like,

(28:37):
all right, that was a fun ride. Now I was
gonna be over because here's a video of me explaining everything, right,
And people still didn't believe it. People were saying that
my my video explaining was fake, that was a conspiracy.
Like people were you know, like invested the into the
actual myth of it. Yeah, because it is it is

(28:59):
so much for a lot of people, they've thought that
is more compelling than the idea that is this like
you know, project around what is real and what's not.
They've got so invested in the reality of it that
they'll explain away every other explanation, right right, um, exactly
Like my I had a teacher at Rutger's where I

(29:22):
did my undergrad to Maudlin. He used to say that,
you know, there's two types of thinking. There's reasoning and
there's rationalizing. Reasoning is when when you start from a
place of ignorance and you um, look at the best
evidence and the best arguments you can find and follow
that through to the you know, the rational conclusion. Rationalizing

(29:43):
is when you start from what you want to believe
and working backwards and looking for you confirmation, right, looking
for the arguments that are already support what you're saying. There.
There was a lot of a lot of rationalizing going on.
I guess people wanted to believe it. Yeah, for for

(30:05):
the how much how many people in this because they
assume for all of like the filming, like like everyone
was all like in on it. But yeah, you know,
there's whole bunch of great stuff around like all of
like the men on the street segments are are are
like perfectly done in terms of like people like just
acting like regular university students, like talking about the stairwell
and like how they've got like lost, and then they're
like looping around in a circle. Um. And all the

(30:27):
segments with you with um like inside the stairwell with
all like the very like the very clever end of thing.
I assume you're using stuff like Adobe after effects. Um,
and yeah, it's it is played. It's played so well
like it's it's I think part of the part of
why it's so successful is that it's not filmed like
you would film something too high like like like for

(30:48):
a lot of films when they want to do like
like you know, like like ah the term is like
a wonner where they had like one long shot and
then they like hide the transitions in between. You can
you can obviously tell like they're filming it to make
these transitions work versus the way you film. This is
just how people would film it if they were filming
this four reel um. And they tell that, and it's
it is so carefully done because it's not trying to

(31:12):
be something it is. It is just being the thing
so earnestly in terms of like how how the actors
like stumble over their lines and the like the opening segment, um,
like the aesthetics of like all of like the title
cards and everything is just so it has this has
this like aura of earnestness, which I think helps sells
the whole project so so much. Yeah. Yeah, actually speaking

(31:35):
of the show and like the cheesy title cards and stuff,
my girlfriend at the time was a producer for this
show called this local show called Homework Cloudline and where
kids call in with their homework and they answer the
questions about it. I studied the ship out of that show,
just looking at how they built the sets and how

(31:55):
cheesy and how awkward like the host store, because a
lot of it was like a lot of the realism
I think of it is just um yeah, the awkwardness
of the people. How it's not um, it's not really
meant to be and and like like the best the
most convincing untruths, right, is a combination of fact and fiction. Yeah,

(32:17):
and you know a lot of and blending in the
actors with real people, you know, in in in the
in the actual video stuff like that. It's like, yeah,
like it comes goes pretty viral. Um, you like pretty
quick create a very easy explanation for No, it's not
it's not real. It's part of this project. People still

(32:38):
believe it for years and years. Um. As kind of
the decade progresses, we go into like the era of disinformation,
everyone starts getting shown into their pockets. Everyone has Facebook
with them wherever they go, everyone has Twitter with them
wherever they go. How is kind of your views on
like the ethics of the project and what it demonstrates
in terms of like a case study and like a
social experiment, Like how has that changed over the years

(32:58):
from like you like ten years ago when you're drimming
this up to you now after you know, we've had
stuff like you know like January six and chew and on.
You know, all these types of things which I feel
like if are almost like foreshadowed in this in this
weird way by showing how successful your little project is. Yeah,
I'm so a lot of a lot of the criticisms

(33:21):
that it was faced from the get go, like from
R I. T. Professors even it's still facing right now,
Like it's still the type of thing people bring up,
which is essentially that, hey, there's so much disinformation out there.
At the time, we weren't even using those terms disinformation, right,
but basically people were. We're bringing up the same complaints,

(33:44):
which is, there's so much disinformation out there, you're basically
just adding to it. What what are you even doing?
So I guess the idea is that, and you know,
it's a very noble idea, which is what sort of
ponds to disinformation? Right, we should I guess the idea
is we should call out every instance of it when

(34:05):
we can flag posts, UM, report posts that violate community
community standards, you know, speak out, um, provide counter evidence
when you see fake news, that sort of thing, And
I think that's great, that's a good thing, UM. But disinformation,
the problem of disinformation is at the time, this is

(34:26):
kind of how I explained that, like ten years ago,
I I described it as a pen as an epidemic, yeah, right,
or or like a cockroach infestation, like every time you
kill one, ten more spring up and v this this
notion of like we gotta call out every instance of
disinformation and stomp it away is like it's great, but

(34:48):
you're focused on killing cockroaches. Yeah, it's like addressing the symptoms,
not the actual problem, right, I want to get to
the cockroach's nest. Right, And whenever whenever I give talks
about this um this project, people always approach me afterwards,
you know, like wanting me to kind of because we
we don't just talk about this project. We talked about

(35:08):
like deep fake stuff, like we show speeches of Obama,
like looking like the real Obama, but it's like completely fake, right,
And people start to realize the holy sh it, like
I don't even know what's real or not anymore, Like
what can I trust? And they approach me expecting me
to ease their anxiety somehow and kind of like guide
them through how to discern what's true from what's not,

(35:30):
as though my project was about finding some sort of solution.
And I tell them that, like, my project wasn't about
solving the problem. It was about seeing the problem, right,
It's about it's about trying to get to the heart
of the matter. And it's like to me, I think,
like the heart of the matter, like the cockroach's nest

(35:50):
is the I don't know you. There are different ways
to say, but basically, the the lack of critical thinking
in individuals and like in this society we shaped together
or um or lack of a willingness to think through
things carefully. Maybe that's that's um. That's like, if we

(36:13):
had a society of critical thinkers, this wouldn't be much
of a problem. I think it's because so many people
come at a lot of information from like when you
would say the rational viewpoint of like they're trying to
use reason and stuff, like they're trying to think critically,
they're trying to think logically, but they come at it
in the terms of rationalizing stuff they already believe. Um.
And I think that's a very prevailing type of idea

(36:35):
in terms of like, yes, I'm gonna believe in this thing,
so I'm gonna find evidence to support it. Um, which
isn't critical thinking. I don't think. I'm not really know
what it is that is itself a logical fallacy. But
that is so calm, especially on the Internet, because the
Internet encourages the backfire effects. You know, whenever someone calls
it on something, you want to be right. So you're
gonna it's as soon as soon as someone callses something,

(36:57):
you're going to backfire. You're going to like be come
even more entrenched in what you believe. Um when you know,
when when you explain to someone that know, Hillary Clinton
is bad, but she doesn't eat the blood of children, like, no,
she does. I saw all this thing. I have to
believe it because like all of the things are tied
up in what makes you a person. And now all
of these ideas that have that where used to be

(37:19):
just be conspiracy theories that you could believe in for fun,
are now so a part of like what people's sense
of being are and how they have their entire world
view that there's so much more because the Internet is
such a bigger part of their lives. Everything on the
Internet is a bigger part of the lives for each person.
So it is more of an ontological threat because these
things are so closer together now, right, They used to

(37:39):
be much more distinction between the Internet and you because
you can only ask the computer every once in a while.
We can now carry on a supercomputer wherever you go,
so it is like a part of you, Like you
bring it with you almost everywhere. It's always in your pocket.
So these things are so like stitched together that prying
them apart and telling people know this thing you would
carry around Actually probably most don't you see on it

(37:59):
isn't isn't actually true, like there is people can like
believe that in their heads but don't actually don't Actually
the belief hasn't actually impact them because like we all
know that there's like we all know that people can
just go on the internet and lie, right, that is
like part of the joke, but we still don't act
like it. Like oftentimes we get so we get so

(38:21):
like encased into the stories that we tell ourselves. Right,
the part of our the is sharing stairwell is so
good is that it's such a it's such a compelling
story like that, Like the idea of like a brilliant
architect bringing like you know, building this paradox in the
real world is like is so much more fun than
being like, yeah, some dude just knows how to use
Adobe after effects. Like right, So you get so entrenched

(38:43):
into storytelling because the story of like politicians eating up
eating the blood of children is so much more interesting
than no, politicians just don't care about you, like, and
getting to the heart of that problem is so much
more difficult than just you know, debunk king things because
you can debunk things all day and does that actually matter? Yeah,

(39:05):
I think there there's there's a secondary problem that, like,
you know, there's another like another level of it, which
is that, yeah, like everyone knows that there's this information now,
like everyone does. But but that just makes it worse
because now if you want to do this information, what
you can claim is like, oh, hey, look at all
these other times that all the stuff has been fake.
And then you know, and this is how you get
everyone like doing frame by frame analysis of like a

(39:26):
bombing and going oh, these are all crisis actors, and
it's like you know, and you talk, you talk to
these people and they're like, oh, yeah, no, I did.
I did the research. Look I like I saw through
the lives. It's like, no, You've just completely made this
thing up in your head. You can see the green
screen compression and like, no, it's just regular video compression.
And it's like, yeah, like everyone can be a detective now,

(39:47):
so everyone can be so convinced to their own conclusions
even when the conclusions turned out to be not true. Right,
it's a problem. If there wasn't exy solution, we wouldn't
have the problem, right, it's one of those things. It's
like your project is a very good example of like
it's it's it's it's a very demonstrative thing. You can
like you you take someone along this journey and demonstrate, hey,

(40:09):
this can happen to you, so you should watch out
for us. Right, look look at the story I crafted.
Look how you become convinced it for these six minutes
and then you think, oh, wait, no, you can't teleport
to a bottom stairwell. That's not that's not how that works. Um.
But because you take them on that journey, it's a
very it's a I love it so much as like
a demonstrative process, being like like this can happen, so

(40:31):
watch out for it in the future. I think is
honestly more useful than just debunking somebody because you can
you can debunk all day, you can have the backfire
effect and stuff. And you're right about the demonstrative stuff,
because it's like if a bunch of film students and
volunteers with no connections and no resources pulled this off

(40:52):
like we did, like a tally of all the videos
at the end of the year of um, you know,
all the videos that ripped it off and posted on
their own channels and all that. Um, it was like
fifty million, right, So if if a bunch of film
students like had that much influence, what more can like
people who are actually fund like and resources, right, what

(41:17):
could they do? And we were just doing and ours
was about like this innocuous, silly Stairwell, it wasn't about
anything that would cause you know, anyone's death or anything
like that or and like you know, something like in
Me and Mar where the ME and Mar military basically
systemically systematically created fake articles and fake photos to create

(41:43):
like to arouse this dame for the row hinge of
people and basically they incited a genocide through Facebook, just
through fake news right in the Philippines where I live
right now, um, which a lot of commentators call like
the patient zero of disinformation because this guy called was

(42:07):
elected president basically ran running his entire campaign on disinformation,
and after him was Brexit like a month later, and
after that was Trump got the nomination. So like what's
her name, Kate Katie Barth Barth or or something like that.
One of the executives of Facebook referred to the Philippines
as Patient zero. In the era of disinformation because like um,

(42:33):
and the thing that the president here right now was
running on was basically like the same sort of um
bothering and scapegoating of a certain group. And he said
basically he's the guy who said like, basically, if you're
a drug user or a drug dealer, it should be
okay to murder you and kill you. And that's what happened.

(42:54):
That's exactly what happened, because they were posting all these
stories about um, you know, the same sorts of stories
that you that that we saw in the US and
twenties sixteen about undocumented immigrants or Muslims or something like that.
This like oh this undocumented immigrant rate the five year
old girl, you know that sort of thing. And he

(43:15):
would the the the organized campaign UM making up stories
about drug addicts like murdering and raping people. Basically like
got an entire nation too, well not an entire nation,
but basically this guy won the election. And you know,

(43:35):
we have a country right now that basically lived through
just atrocities the last five six years, you know, and
like the double edged sort of this, like Chris mentioned,
is like, yeah, this type same type of thing, because
it exists. People also like retractively apply it to like
you know, like Sandy Hook was staged or like even

(43:59):
stuff now with like you know, the pandemic, right, people
like what what? What is the pandemic is a real?
What if all these people have just you know, conjured
this thing into being and it's all a giant insufferation campaign, right,
So it has this dual it has this double edged
sword nature um which makes combat and disformation so challenging.
It's like disiforation to combat its information to comment the

(44:19):
idea of disinformation, and there's so many layers of it.
Now there's this this it's just yeah, it makes it,
it makes actually get into the heart of it so
much more challenging. It's been abstracted so many times. And
one of the things what didn't didn't the New York
Times weren't it the first people to come up with
the term fake news? And then Trump started using it
after Like we was watching plotificate which newspaper was but

(44:42):
my memory if it was like it was, it was
it was the media that came up with fake news
and then like Trump just took it and it became
this like this just like demon they absolutely could not
control and was just turned on them. Do you do
you remember the context in which they used it. They
were like they were I think they were calling like
stuff that Trump said fake news. Mmm, I am. I'm

(45:06):
unsure at the moment who specifically coined that term. But
I mean we definitely see terms like even in terms
like desipiration, which you used to be more tied to,
like a discording in philosophy, breaking like in like even
even back even as back far as like the eighties,
getting you know, turned into an actual like political term
that everybody uses. It was actually somebody from buzz Speed.

(45:30):
An editor at buzz Speed was one of that makes sense,
is one of the ones who first popularized it. Was Yeah,
but there could be there could be you know, several
other people that say that they coined it. I don't know.
I mean, I even there's even h an illustration from

(45:51):
eighteen ninety four by by Frederick Offer with reporters carrying
newspapers labeled humble news, cheap sensation, and fake news. So
it's I mean, in terms of in terms of just
mashing words together. I'm sure it has has had a
decent history, but definitely Trump is the one that like
launched it into the Zeitgeist right right, right, Let's see, Robert,

(46:15):
you've been pretty quiet. I know it's pretty early in
the morning for you. Do you have any do you
have any kind of thoughts to help us kind of
generally start closing us out, not not not like super immediately,
but generally having that direction. I mean no, not really
kind of brought uct everything. I would say, all right,
all right, it's ah, yeah, I guess. Uh, Mike, what

(46:38):
have How is this project impacted how you approach film
and just the like, how you how you use the
internet yourself in the past decade? M hm, Well, I
I'm fully aware of what we did. Every time I'm
like looking at something, I'm like they had done that,

(47:00):
they have done this and that, you know that sort
of thing. Um, I don't know if it's if yeah,
I don't I'm not sure how it's how this project
specifically had impacted me, other than just trying to think
through things a bit more carefully, trying to go through

(47:21):
things like, um, I mean, like, so we we basically
came up with this idea of what eventually became troll farms, right,
like me and like my classmates would hey, we even
make fake accounts and like talk about the stairwell and
um so, I don't know, like a few years later,

(47:45):
people we we learned that people were actually doing this
like to influence like elections around the world, and a
lot of the strategy of like the Russian troll farms
and stuff, um was basically create caricature versions right of
arguments from whatever side, like you know, whether they might

(48:07):
present an argument from like the left or the right,
but in like a caricaturized version of it. And um
so what people would see when they see that, they'd
see an argument coming from the other side, and they'd
ridicule it, like look at these people who just seem
crazy espousing this whatever view, you know, or they might
say things like um, like yeah, if you're a Democrat,

(48:31):
you want to abort babies that like the ninth month
or something like that, which no reasonable person actually argued.
So what happens is like, um people talk about how
the goal of Russia was to like polarize, you know, um,
polarize the political spectrum. I think like the bigger goal

(48:51):
in the the goal that we're gonna be untangling for
many many years, and the more um, the more difficult
problem to deal with was that they oversimple they successfully
oversimplified discourse, you know what I'm saying, Like they found
a way to like oversimplify the type of discourse we're

(49:14):
having because everyone's like arguing with such simplist thick I'm
not sure if I'm making sense. It's like it's like
it's like the term I use is like politics as fandom,
right right, And that's I think that like intersect not
not exactly what you're saying, but like intersects with that
type of idea of like condensing down actual discussions on

(49:36):
like what you believe in, um and what politics you
want and how you want to put the world into
this weird fandom lens of like this team versus this
team which we we we we we we we. We've
had a degree of that for a long long time.
But with the Internet and how how discussions on the
Internet are designed to work, right, how algorithms want to
boost content, how there's always these short snippets they just

(49:58):
in mirrors the way people discussed like what Star Wars
character is their favorite? It's just that. But for politics, um,
so it's it's just this like what if politics is
just this idea of fandom, and you can debate what
fandom is more valid than the other. Right, I like
the last Jedi more you like Rise of Skywalker. This
means your version of reality is less good than mine.

(50:19):
So when that which is, which is but that it's
that same idea but for how we like make social
programs and how we address racism, and how we like
give food to poor people, and how we do affordable
housing and how we handle the police. So it's that
type of idea which is just the disinformation kind of

(50:45):
impacts this in part because when you flood the zone
with so much conflicting information that people can't really get
a handle on or easily sort of like when there
when when you when you put that much confusion in
to the air, um, it makes people more likely to
just kind of grasp its sides because everything coming out

(51:06):
is way too complicated and messy, and it's it takes
too much work what's actually true. So holding to some
lubric of well, I believe this, So that means these
are the good guys, these are the bad guys, and
I don't have to analyze it any deeper than that.
I can reject information that comes from this group. Where
I can reject information that says this, um, because I

(51:27):
just category categorically reject you know, anything that that fits
in with that, Like, that's the benefit of disinformation for
authoritarians of all stripes. You're seeing in Ukraine right now,
where Um, you've got all of these different authoritarian powers.
You've got Turkey, you've got Russia, you've got um, you know,
sucking the United States at least to the extent that

(51:49):
like we impact a lot of things internationally. Um. And
you've got them all coming down on different sides of
this issue and of what's happening in Ukraine. And because
there's so much disinformation and misinformation about what's going on,
people just kind of grasp at whatever side I'm have
been more sympathetic to recently, I'm just going to believe

(52:11):
whatever they say because it's way too complicated to actually
analyze what's going on. Yeah, And this was this was
the thing that I mean, this was explicit on the left.
I remember this. There was this around um sheen. There
was a whole thing about how like people people like
talking about anti imperialism would would literally say like nuance
nuances liberalism. I don't like nuances liberalism don't don't research this,

(52:34):
don't think about this because nuances how liberals like you know,
spread sort of pro promising and change proplicanda, Like I
remember those people like Ember Frost just just straight up
said this and this was a huge and you know,
like I I got a lot of shift for this
because you know, like I remember when when when the
Coon Bolivia happened, Like I made a giant thread that
was trying to that was like, Okay, we need to
figure out like how specifically the CIA was involved in this,

(52:57):
Like okay, so did they plan the whole thing? Was
it like we're they're working with local partners. Wasn't a
thing where someone else planned it and they signed off
on it? And like to this day, people think that
I supported the coup because I was like we should
figure out who was who the actors were in the
ground because no one like this. This this, this this
became like a like like like a tenant, like like
an actual sort of like like political tenants of of

(53:19):
how a lot of antimpurialism, like in the American left worked.
Was you you were not supposed to do nuanced, You
were not supposed to look at who was like you
know if if if you spent too long looking at
what was going on in the ground, people would be
like you worked for the CIA and that you know,
I think like we we've we've finally seen that basically
blow up in their faces because you know, oh, hey,
look how many of these people just like wound up

(53:41):
supporting Russia and then spent like three months saying that
Russia would never invade Ukraine. That this happens. But it's
I don't know, it's it's it's it's extremely depressing how
people who otherwise are you know, like in a lot
of ways, like I've spent a lot of their time
like trying to filter out stuff from the media that's

(54:02):
false just go into this because they just do not
want to deal with the complexity of reality. Yeah, just
easier not to. Again, if there was a simple problem,
we wouldn't I mean, if there was a simple solution,
we wouldn't need to discuss the problem. Yeah. Yeah, So
I guess basically, like just to like, um, answer that

(54:24):
question about how it I guess at the time, I'd say,
like we got an up close look at how things
were going to be, Like, you know, with with all
these things we we kind of anticipated the next few years.
Um so yeah, that's basically what happened. Um, sorry to
interrupt your clothing, but no, no, no, it's the it's

(54:49):
the best note that that we can go. Um, Michael,
do you where can people find you online? And if
people want to look into some of your other projects,
I mean you found me, Like, if they want to
find me, they'll find me, right, I don't know. I
still don't know. You got my email, but Garrison is
extremely good about this to any people, and I could

(55:10):
uh yeah, well they can check out the YouTube channel
like I'm gonna be posting some new films this year probably,
Um so my name Michael Luck can allow or just
search the Assarians there. I guess that's a way. Yeah, yeah,
I'll add your YouTube channel to to the description. Yeah.
I just want to thank you so much for coming

(55:31):
on to talk about your your project. Yeah, thanks for
having me. All right, Well, that that does it for
us today. You can follow us on the internet for
some reason, um on Twitter, Instagram, that happened here pod
and cool some media and yeah, go go create a

(55:51):
myth that people will believe and travel from out of
country to walk over some stairs because that sounds like fun.
Go to something like that for funzies. All right, bye bye,
Except happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Or more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website

(56:12):
cool zone media dot com or check us out on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could
happen here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com
slash sources. Thanks for listening.