The Age of Transitions 7-11-2025 Release

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:18):
You're listening to the Age of Transitions. I'm your host,
Aaron Franz. This is not a live show, it is
pre recorded. However, it will be premiering at the Ocelly
Radio Network. Please go to Ocelly dot com and give
a donation to keep the network growing and to help
chuck out the Age Offtransitions dot com is my website.

(00:40):
Go there to find this podcast, and I also have
my book, Revolve Man's Scientific Rise to Godhood there paperback
or ebook copies available the Patreon campaign. The link is
at the Age of Transitions dot com. Thank you everybody
who follows on Patreon. I just finished the Singularity Summit

(01:03):
series as I mentioned on the last little quick posts
to the podcast feed, and I'll be doing more videos
coming up in the future that will be posting exclusively
to Patreon. Have the affiliate links as well Bookshop dot Org. Ever,
buying books online, remember to click through the link on
my website first that takes you to bookshop dot Org.

(01:25):
Then at that point anything you buy, I'll get a
small amount just for sending you there, so thank you
for that. And promo code Fronds for Libson gets you
two months of Libson Podcast hosting service for free. On
this episode, I welcome back my guest from just last show,
which is Why, who wrote the Untold Origins of QAnon

(01:49):
article series which is on Medium. I will have his
article posts linked in this at the Age of Transitions
dot Com on this episode. In the previous episode with him,
I do recommend you go read those articles. So this
is a fun show. We picked up where we left
off last time, and we start off this show by

(02:12):
talking about Julian Assange. So I hope you enjoy this
everybody today, I am welcome welcoming back to the show
Why to continue speaking about his unknown q andon Origins
article series. So, Hello, how are you doing there?

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Why good? How are you?

Speaker 1 (02:33):
I'm well, thank you very much for being here today.
I appreciate it. It's good to be back in talking
to you. I guess we'll just pick up where we
left off on the live show that we did a
couple of weeks ago. How about you refreshed me. I'm
trying to remember what we leave off on. Weren't we
going to talk about? I think I remember what was it?

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Well, we pretty much got up to wiki leaks. Yes, Julian,
we kind of covered I mean, we kind of covered everything,
but in an extremely broad sense. We covered Anonymous a
little bit and how that connects to the hacker culture,

(03:19):
how that led into sort of the era of QAnon
and from the era of twenty eleven and all the
different hacking stuff that was going on around WikiLeaks at
that time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Yeah, Now is there anything that you've think that you
feel that we missed in the previous show, or just
anything you want to expand on that we already talked
about or no, Well.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
We covered everything in a very, like I said, a
very broad and kind of shallow sense. You could go
into anything in much more detail, but you got to
choose something in particular. So I was thinking, like WikiLeaks
would be good. I mean, you can't really understand this

(04:11):
stuff unless you take it together and in context, so
you can dive into a particular aspect of it. But
it was not going to make sense unless you already
understand more of the context. So I think sort of
taking it chronologically in multiple passes kind of works better

(04:34):
because it allows you to take in the entire story
from sort of different aspects, probably speaking, So I think
it might be a good idea to just take this
time and discuss WikiLeaks from Julian Nosandra's childhood all the

(04:55):
way up through twenty eleven and through twenty sixteen. It
sounds good to me, and it's going to connect. Yeah,
and you're going to connect the stuff we were talking
about before.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, you're absolutely right, and I'll apologize to you and
the audience in that we're only going to be able
to do so much with these podcast episodes for sure.
As you're saying, there's so much detail involved in all
of this, and that's why I would suggest reading your
article series, which I will once again link at my
website so there'll be the link to that. But we'll

(05:27):
do what we can. We'll do what we can, and
I think that's a great idea. We'll just hop in.
Why don't you just go ahead and tell us all
about mister Julian Sonja. I want to hear about this.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Sure. Well, like you were saying, there is so much
detail in all of this, and I think in the
past show that we did, you were saying that you
wanted to with your show here, you want to try
to get to the bottom of all this, And I mean,
I've been researching this a lot over the past few years,

(06:01):
and I can say that it's very difficult to get
to the bottom of it, but it is possible, and
the stuff is out there and it needs people researching it.
But it is very difficult because there's so much. So

(06:22):
starting with wiki leaks, maybe you would want to tell me, like,
what do you remember about like the first time that
you heard about wiki leaks are assange?

Speaker 1 (06:33):
I'd say a good question, because I feel I've never
deeply looked at it at all. I've only seen the
passing stuff with I remember Julining masannge popping up with
the wiki leaks, and the whole idea is like, look,
he's making this platform for whistleblowers to post their material.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
And do you remember that when it actually started, or
do you remember like the Snowden or the man stuff
cable Gate the very first thing there was stuff before.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
I do recall Snowden, Yes, and then that see I
don't even remember if Snowden led into a sane they
were were they like? Was was that part of the
before WikiLeaks was before Snowden even came out.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
And and Chelsea Manning's leaks were before Snowden's I'm pretty sure.
And that was with Manning. That was cable Gate. That
was the first big thing with WikiLeaks was cable gate,
which was military or diplomatic and military cables and stuff

(07:43):
like that, or military files. There was a bunch of
files about Iraq, Afghanistan. And then later on Snowden was
the NSA stuff, which was also leaked through Wiki leaks,
or at least it was done in coordination with them.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Okay, Okay, So Snowden was working with a songe to
release his material, presumably exposing the NSA what they were
up to.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah, but before that, it all starts a few years
before any of that. It starts in about two thousand
and six, I think.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Okay, two thousand, Okay, so what's going on in two
thousand and six.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Let's see. Well, in two thousand and six, a Songe
actually writes sort of some conceptual essays about this idea
that he has for how this leaking is going to
like dismantle these authoritarian institutions, And the way it's supposed

(08:54):
to work is that it's kind of based on like
a cognitive model of communication within institutions, where in order
for a secretive institution to exist, the people inside of
it need to be able to communicate with each other
while keeping the information from leaving the institution, and that

(09:18):
if he gets people to leak information out of them,
it's going to basically make it impossible for the actual
people in there to communicate with each other because they're
going to become like paranoid.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
Okay, so it's going to break down their internal communication system,
the leaking process. Yeah, Okay, interesting, that's or that this
is the concept he's selling.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, and I have a link to that two thousand
essay in my article.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
Two thousand and six essay by Assange. Now, assannge, who
was he and what he what was he doing in.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Two thousand and six? What was his role? Like, Well,
let's start with his actual child, I guess because so
Sang was born in Australia. He's Australian and I think
nineteen seventy one. His parents are activists, he doesn't. I

(10:20):
think his father leaves pretty quickly, but he stays with
his mother for most of his childhood. So there's this
there's this period of his childhood where he supposedly his
mother's boyfriend is like this abusive cult member and is
trying to sort of they're trying to get away from him.

(10:45):
And so he says that they spent several years like
moving from place to place trying to get away from
this guy.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
And that's that's a strange aspect of his childhood, okay,
because they say that he's a member of this cult.
The boyfriend whose name is I think his name is
Leif Maynell and so and so this cult, you can
actually look it up. It's called the Family, and it's

(11:16):
also called the Great White Brotherhood. Okay, it's one of
those cults. And and then one of the things that
they did was they would like abduct children basically or
find like orphaned children, raise them in this cult, and
they would dye all their hair white. Okay, just like

(11:39):
as songe of course. But officially Assange was never actually
like part of this. But he does say in pretty
much every account of his childhood that I've been able
to find, it talks about him running from this cult
because of this this boyfriend of his mom's who was
trying to I guess, get back with them or they

(12:00):
say he was trying to get sort of into Assange's
life kind of like as a father figure or something. Okay,
but it's very suspicious because those types of cults come
up later in QAnon.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Okay, so the do we even want to We'll just
reference them. We'll come back to it, the fact that
those cults are a part of q Andon.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
Right, Let's just say the the concept of the white
Hats in QAnon is the same concept as these cults
had with this great white brotherhood.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeahat white Brothers.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
Like it's it's very strange. So after this period, I
think this lasts until Asanje is a teenager and then
he says that at some point he gets old enough
where like this guy comes back and Assans just confronts
him and like tells him to leave and leave him alone.

(13:01):
And apparently this kind of ends that period. Okay, so
after this, Assan gets into the hacker culture.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Okay, about how old is How old is he at
this point.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Assange, he's about fifteen.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Fifteen, Okay, so he's he's a young teenager getting into
the world of the hacker world.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Oh yeah, okay, got it, and he actually becomes like
extremely good at hacking. There's a book written in nineteen
ninety six by Assange and Suile At Dreyfus called Underground,
and this is about the various prosecutions of people in

(13:46):
the Australian hacking culture, which includes as songe.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
Okay, so he did he get apprehended early on when
he's a young guy?

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Still he was in his early twenties when he got afriended.
I think interesting, Yeah, he would be like twenty or
a little bit older.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
All right, And what's the official story of he gets caught,
like what supposedly happened to him.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
I don't think that he went to jail. I mean,
he gets convicted, okay, but I don't think that he
goes to jail.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Okay, Okay.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
He's trying to hackeno no, no.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
No, okay, I'm sorry. Continue, I'll jump in here in
a minute. But he's trying to hack into.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
What he's trying to hack in to telecommunications companies.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
Okay, So the point of I'm sorry, I'm sorry, continue,
go ahead.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
So at this time, in the early nineties and late eighties,
really most of it's the late eighties, the hacking culture
is kind of like regional because they don't have the
Internet or access to the Internet is pretty limited. They
also have these other international networks, the X twenty five networks,

(15:05):
which are packet networks, but they're also limited access. So
a lot of the hacker scenes are based around like
local bulletin board services, and then like these hackers are
all trying to get onto these bigger networks through like
hacking into like local computers that they can dial into.

(15:25):
So at this point in time, there is kind of
like a well, the Internet itself is just going to
be starting up, and there's also in the hacker culture
there's also kind of a it's becoming like international in
a way that it wasn't really before, it was.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Just starting got it, and did I do want to
interject this Assange gets caught early on.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
He's young.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
He doesn't seem to do time, is what you're saying, right,
He doesn't really seem to get in trouble. And I
mean one of the patterns with this sort of thing
is if you are into this sort of thing and
you're good and you get caught a lot of times
you get recruited right by you know, name the agency

(16:13):
or you know, group aspect of the government NSA or
what have you. Like, Okay, if you come work with us,
you know you're not going to get in trouble, but
you know, we know you're good. So we're recruiting you
this way. What do you think about that?

Speaker 2 (16:30):
Well, people have speculated about that. I don't really know
for sure, yeah, yeah, but it's certainly something that people
have speculated about.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
Sure, so it's a possibility. Yeah, we don't know, but
like that's definitely something that has happened with other people.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
So who knows if that did happen. I mean it's
interesting because if you think about anything with WikiLeaks and Assange,
what most people think is that might be going on
is they think that he's like working for the Russians, right, Okay,
that's the conspiracy that the most, like the normalst normal

(17:12):
conspiracy about him is that, like he helped the Russians
hack the election in twenty sixteen, Okay, which would be
kind of strange if he was an asset of the
American intelligence exactly. Who knows?

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah, okay, I had I had forgotten that the story
went that Assandra's part of the Russia Gate thing. I
did not recall that.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Well, I mean, in some sense, he would have to be.
I mean, he was communicating with people, or WikiLeaks was
communicating with people. I think they were communicating with Guzifer
or whatever, and maybe like Roger Stone or some of
those people. Okay, communicating with Wiki leaks and talking about
but I mean, even regardless of the particulars, the idea

(18:06):
of Russia Gate involves the fact that the WikiLeaks leaks
had to be like part of it somehow, because that's
like the Russians would have hacked those emails and given
them to WikiLeaks, and WikiLeaks would have like gone along
with it, I see. And you know when they were
releasing that stuff, they were like openly doing it in

(18:28):
order to influence the election. So from that you can
say that they were working with the Russians or something.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
But all right, well, anyway, I'm sorry to throw that
dadgit in there. Let's continue with a san She's still
a young guy. What's he up to now?

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Well, interestingly, the next thing that he does is actually
he starts one of the early ISPs in Australia. So,
like I was saying, the Internet was just starting up
at that time. Actually, it says here that he gets
convicted in nineteen ninety six on Wikipedia. So I'm trying

(19:08):
to think of when he started the ISP because I
thought that he started it earlier than that.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
Really, okays, a lot going on with the aside share interesting.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Well, yeah, so anyway, he seems like he started this
ISP which was called Suburbia dot net in like the
early nineties. Sometimes oh wow, in his conviction or maybe after,
I don't know, but it was one of the first
ISPs in Australia.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Okay, Well, he was a busy guy professionally and in
his hacker in the hacker world, he was doing a lot.
In his youth is the young years of his life.
He's getting a lot of things going here.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
He's kind of involved in activist culture and like just
the early Internet culture. He has another website, iq dot org,
which is like his personal site. So you can go
to that, and you can also go to suburbia dot net.
Go to either one of those. On the wayback machine
you can find old stuff that Assaunch posted. And then

(20:18):
eventually in two thousand and six is when he establishes WikiLeaks.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Okay, two thousand and six WikiLeaks. HiT's the scene? Okay,
and what was the premiere of that? What was that
looking like.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
Like the first first thing they did or yeah, yeah,
what was like it's like, okay, here's wiki leagues, Like
what was that? What was going on? Well? He publishes
those essays about his concept during the beginning the early
period of WikiLeaks. It's kind of more of like aconceptual thing.

(20:53):
He's trying to get people who are interested in this idea.
He's trying to build this infrastructure because supposedly they have
some kind of really advanced infrastructure that allows people to
leak stuff to them in a way that's untraceable, although
I'm not really sure what that consists of. But they're

(21:13):
building the actual technology. He's hanging around hacker conventions and
speaking about his idea.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
Okay, so he's putting the word out there like, hey, leakers,
start leaking, I'm building a platform for you to be
able to do it safely.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
That's the idea. Yep, okay, yep okay. Interesting.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
So it's fascinating to see how these things are put
out just as ideas, like these countercultural ideas first and
then to see what they actually turn into. So this
is like the initial that phase where just advertising essentially. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
I think one of the early people who was helping
him promote that was Daniel Ellsberg.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
Okay, and and quite remember him. I don't I know
the name who is Elsberg?

Speaker 2 (22:06):
He? I think he's a guy who released the Pentagon Paper.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
The Pentagon Papers. Okay, Okay, so he's he's a journalist.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
Right, yeah, but he's also he like worked for the military,
and there's some kind of he worked for the Rand Corporation.
There's some conspiracy stuff about how maybe the Pentagon Papers
was limited hangout. Okay, So it's kind of interesting to

(22:37):
see in that context that he would be associated with
wiki leagues. But his images in the public is mostly
that he's kind of like a just like a sane
which is that he's like a guy who believes in
transparency and leaking government secrets.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
Interesting, okay, so these Okay, So at this point, I
mean it's important just to note that we have a
growing list of accepted people given out into the public sphere.
Of these are the countercultural people that are bringing out

(23:16):
the truth of government secrets of corruption, and there is
an infrastructure these people are part of it, and you know,
take that for what it is. We're trying to figure
out what that even means here, uh, but that's definitely
something that has been going on all along.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah. So at this point, we've kind of covered the
whole period of history because we know what happens after that. Okay,
And like you said, it's it's the counter culture, but
what that actually means seems to have changed greatly from

(23:57):
the time we're talking about with the these guys and
stuff that would start happening after twenty eleven. And it's
also you know, the tech culture of the Internet and
people who were involved with the early Internet and how
they thought it was going to change politics. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Well, there's also that general concept you're alluding to is like, look,
here's the Internet. It's going to be the great revealer
of all truths, and it's going to swing open the
door of all the secrets that were there before. No
one's going to be able to hide anything. Corruption will
be exposed. That's kind of like this idealistic concept that

(24:42):
was put out from the start. These guys are the
ones who are very much taking that idea and apparently
making it into reality.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Suppose.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah, so where are we going with a son from here?
What do we do with this guy?

Speaker 2 (25:00):
Well, I guess at this point, what are we trying
to what question are we trying to answer about him?

Speaker 1 (25:09):
Well, how does he tie into Well, I guess we
spoke to hacker culture, but does he link back to
Anonymous because we were talking about Anonymous in the previous episode.
Does he have any ties of Anonymous or is Anonymous
promoting him? And what is the plan that website? Does

(25:31):
that tie into a songe in WikiLeaks somehow?

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Soonge doesn't really tie into Anonymous in any obvious way.
They both are things that originate from the same kind
of counterculture of the actavist hacker culture. There might be
some connections to uncover between some early like two thousand's

(25:55):
and early twenty tens stuff about another Anonymous that that
might show some connections there, but he doesn't really seem to.
I mean, by the time Anonymous comes off of like
four tan and Assange is like doing He's busy doing

(26:17):
like this wiki leak stuff. He's not like engaging and
like trolling and stuff with people like the Anonymous because
the whole thing with Anonymous was supposed to be like that.
They're just having fun with everything. They're not like even
though they are like activists, they're also kind of like

(26:38):
supposed to be uh, like the Mary Pranksters or something.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, and very much Anonymous always comes off as like
this art project more than even like activism.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, and there's connections to art subcultures, but like this
kind of stuff is all can in the early cyber
hacker activist culture, but asanj is more on the political
side of it. I know something I can bring in
here is this whole Cickeida thirty three oh one alternate

(27:14):
reality game stuff. Yes, what is so? That is something
that a lot of people have suggested is connected to QAnon,
and I think they're somewhat correct in that, although there's
also a lot of other stuff that that's connected to
it in a similar way, including the stuff that happened

(27:34):
on this what is the plan site, But this whole
Cicada thing, I mean, do you understand what this concept
of the alternate reality game is?

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yes, basically it's an idea of people. It's being done
through forums in this case, But what it is is
you try to do some sort of group project where
you are on line but you're taking material from reality
and somehow like building something. And the idea was that

(28:07):
the Cicada game ends up building something, right, some piece
of software. Am I all right in this?

Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah? Yeah, it's kind of like an art project or
like a game that mixes media and like reality. Mostly
the format it takes, and it's existed before the Internet
in kind of like the Discordian and like other countercultures.
The format usually takes is that you'll like see a

(28:37):
website with like some kind of puzzle on it. People
will start talking about, like, what is the mystery about
this website? A lot of times it will be like
promoted without actually openly promoting it, but people will go
on forums and stuff and post about it to get

(28:58):
people interested.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Okay, so there's always some there's always some interesting form
of promotion of these ARGs.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Yeah, there was an article as well that Assane was
involved in some of this stuff during when he was
in college. I can't find it though. It was when
he was in college in Australia.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
Okay, so he was he was setting up in alternate
reality game ors. He he was like a player in
one or something.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
He was setting up. His college had some kind of
like thing they would do where they would like publish
puzzles in the college newspaper or something like that. But
it was kind of the same idea. So, yeah, the
Cicada thing. According to one person who says that they
got to like the deep level of it or whatever
it sounds like they were trying to create software for

(29:52):
something like wiki leaks and the what is the plan stuff,
They were also trying to support wiki leaks. So it
doesn't really prove anything because everybody in that part of
like internet culture was trying to do stuff to help
WikiLeaks around the time of twenty eleven. It was a

(30:14):
really uh universal position.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Yes, so they were the good guys in terms of
this sort of rebellious countercultural tide, like WikiLeaks is the
thing that we need to empower to bring to justice,
you know, the powers that be or whatnot. That was
just an accepted reality.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah, among any of the websites where like slashdot or
Reddit or any of these websites where hacker internet subculture
people would go, it was unanimous support of WikiLeaks. Interesting, okay,
And so I mean I think think it definitely does

(31:01):
mean something that these games were connected because because QAnon
absolutely ends up drawing from the same techniques as those games,
and it's also obviously connected to WikiLeaks, okay.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
And the techniques you're talking about is basically setting up
an online community that interacts with one another, putting pieces
of a parent puzzle together and crafting maybe a narrative
or helping to craft some kind of weird narrative, is
that what's going on?

Speaker 2 (31:34):
Well with the Cicada one and the what is the
Plan one, it was just pretty much like you solve
these puzzles and then you get into this like chat
room or whatever, and they start saying, like you've solved it,
you're you're smart, and we need your help to like
build this software. Interesting, So that's that part of it

(31:57):
was kind of separate from the like the game part
of it. It was kind of like after the game,
they would say, well, you need to help us build this.
But the overall thing that those kind of games do
is they can bring I mean they they are participatory.

(32:18):
So when you see something like pizzagate, for example, that
takes on a similar form except instead they're basically telling
people to do research, like opposition research on politicians, except
they turn it into a game with memes and online

(32:41):
communities where any random person can come in and participate.
So they're mobilizing people.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Got it, Yeah, for political ends. We're talking explicitly about policy,
So it becomes explicitly political when QAnon shows up before
not so much much tangentially, Maybe.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
It depends on what you mean. I mean, you could
say that it was even less political when it became
q and on because q andon became like incoherent in
terms of anything political.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Yeah, but at the same time, QAnon was always used
to prop up the whole maga thing, isn't that. I mean,
where we go, where we go, it just continues to
be trust the plan, the plan being that Donald Trump
is going to you know, do whatever it is.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah, Well, it depends on what you mean by political.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
Well, I mean that seems like it's that that seems
as explicitly political as you can get, because we're talking
about first of all, getting a president elected and then
second of all, once they're elected, just cheering them onward
because of whatever this weird ornate reality game you're playing.

(33:55):
It's it's all, but we're talking about the president of
the United States, the executive branch, you know. I mean
to me, that seems like the most Yeah, it is, right, like,
in a mainstream sense, that's as political as it gets.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Right it is. But in another sense, it's also kind
of like, uh, completely detached from any real political issues.
So in a certain sense, it is it's it just
brings up an interesting distinction with the term like what

(34:31):
is really political activity's.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
I mean, that's a wild dichotomy to think about, is
the president of the United States. And then on the
other end of this whatever, this meme game, online culture,
hacker world is.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah, and the people on four Chan who were doing
that stuff were very open about what they what they
thought they were doing.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
Okay, so what were they saying they were doing.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
Well, they said that they were basically doing chaos magic,
which is basically the use of memes and the use
of It's the same thing that these alternate reality games
are in a certain sense, is that you can kind
of reach out through the medium of the Internet and

(35:27):
kind of tap into people's cognition and get them to
repeat whatever you're saying, or get them to conduct research
on your behalf and collaborate on projects. And this actually works.

(35:49):
It's not something supernatural, but it's something that works in
practical terms.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
Sure, so it's being present as definitely an occult concept,
chaos magic, But what you're saying is that practically speaking,
what they're doing when they say they're doing chaos magic
is that this thing gets results and we can we
can see that. So that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
I mean, it's kind of like the evolution of like
how people used to think about TV, like controlling people
and like turning people into zombies. In a way, it's
kind of just like that, except as participatory. Now, got it.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
It's well, yeah, the Internet is interactive. We're talking about forums.
It's where people are communicating with each other. So it's
taking this interactive communication network media and bringing in this
occult chaos magic concept that kind of dovetails also with

(36:57):
this weird sort of all art artistic slash activist communities.
There's a lot going on.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Here, Yeah, there is, but you're getting the picture of it.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yeah, right, So this is so we're talking about occult concepts,
we're talking about practical technological innovations. I guess you could say,
with the technical side of the Internet what it actually is.
We're also talking about politics, we're talking about activism, We're

(37:38):
talking about art, We're talking about narrative building and community building.
What about that? What about community building? Let's talk about that, Like,
because throughout all of this it seems like it's just
this weird, sort of nebulous They're never even with something

(38:00):
like QAnon, they have this where we go one we
go all idea like it's one actual group, but never
seems to be like one group because you never is
there a group in person. It's it's always facilitated online.
But when you think about like an actual group of
people getting together, has that ever even happened in the

(38:22):
middle of this or is it about not making that happen?

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Well, that's very interesting if you're thinking of it in
terms of like identity and the idea of the anonymous
identity and like organization. I mean, the organization is a network.
They're organizing people in a structure that is a network.

(38:52):
And if you look back at like the whole New
Age movement, because a lot of what a lot of
this stuff comes out of the cybernetic like transhumanist kind
of New ag culture, which you should be familiar with,
right because this is what you were covering in your book,
And you know those people talk about networking a lot,

(39:13):
right sure, And they talk about it in terms of
how their own movements are structured, even maybe more so
than they talk about it in terms of actual computer networks.
So in terms of identity, what's what's interesting to me
is with like the anonymous thing it's associated with like trolling, yes,

(39:34):
And there is like a corresponding like other type of
internet person who is like maybe the one who's usually
the target of trolling, which is like the person who
gets easily offended and has like like handles that identify
them online. And then there's like the anonymous person who's

(39:58):
like the troll who is you know, has no identity.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah, they're always anonymous, they're an anon.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah, And so it's kind of a question of like
who is actually more like sociopathic between the two of those,
because one of the ideas that the anonymous people would
always kind of promote is that they're like ego lists
or something because they have no identity. But when you

(40:31):
look at the things that they've done, it turns out that, uh,
I don't know. But because when you look at the
other people though, like what the ones who they would
call like the social justice warriors who are like the
enemies of the annons generally, like those people are also
very sociopathic in some ways. But but like there's this

(40:54):
one is like a is absolutely identified and even like
they're obsessed with identity and this is you know, identity politics,
and the other one is like completely identity less and
they're supposed to be like competing with each other in
some way. In some ways, they're.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
Kind of a it's a purity test. It's that they're
they're undergoing like this purity test that they're in a
competition with. There is an another occult aspect of this
is who has less ego? Right, It's almost like they're
buying for the Master's uh good graces or something, right,

(41:36):
Uh huh. That's kind of an interesting way to take it.
It's like who's who is the most pure in this?

Speaker 2 (41:43):
What?

Speaker 1 (41:44):
What kind of battle in heaven are we talking about here?

Speaker 2 (41:47):
Right? Yeah, some of them have thought of it in
those terms.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
Yeah, Well, of course they have. They always It always
ends up that way when we get onto things like this.
But that's the way of things, I guess. Have we
have we covered a songe to your liking? Is there
anything else you think we should bring up with him?
Or do you want to move on from here, because
we could if you want to move on to QAnon itself.
Is it too early to do that or would or

(42:15):
do you would you like to?

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Well, there's a lot of stuff in twenty eleven that
we haven't exactly covered, but.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
We could go back to that too. We could go
back to that. How about that? What what should be?
I mean, should we.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Could go to QAnon? Okay, here's here's something. I mean,
there isn't any like order in which we should address
this stuff. It's all connected. So yeah, that's true. So
in my QAnon article, one of the thing that I
start out with is to observe that in these cults,

(42:54):
like you know, oftentimes involving the Great White Brotherhood, which
is associated with the theosophy, I mean that's where it
comes from.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
Right, sure, Yeah, that's that's probably one of the earliest
incarnations of that actual term Great White Brotherhood. But it
definitely comes up again and again when you're talking about
these occult groups, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
And there's there's other kind of versions of that, like
that are about some kind of secret society.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Yeah, I mean New Age groups are always using that
like oh yes, we're part of the Great White Brotherhood
and that they're saying how great it is. It's like
these New Age cults always use that term.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
So yeah, the observation and other people have made this
observation as well. But the observation is that if you
look at QAnon and the way QAnon actually speaks as
well as sort of just the idea of this this
entity or something that it that what these cults do

(43:57):
is they often channel entity. That's like one of their
big things.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
Are they doing this explicitly? Are they explicitly saying hey,
we're we're invoking this deity or they just kind of
someone has.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah, they do. They do that all the time. Okay,
they have entire books full of channeled material. You you
were you were talking about one of them in your book,
but I don't remember what it was called. Yes, yes,
there's endless amount of this material.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
Well, it's it's it's it's an ongoing thing like any
give any given like online platform and I see this
on social media now TikTok is rife with this, with
just TikTok user saying yeah, I just channeled an alien today.
The audience name is this or that. So it's an
ongoing it's an ongoing motif.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
And those videos are weird and there's like thousands of
those videos.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
Oh yeah, they're endless. It's there's there's an endless there
always have been online endless amounts of these things. So
it's it's a pat uh.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
So yeah, that's all. That's all that I'm talking about,
except that when you look at QAnon, that is the
same thing, or at least it appears like it could
be the same thing, right, Okay, the way QAnon speaks,
like have you read the posts?

Speaker 1 (45:15):
You know what? I I never have dived into the
actual posts looking at them myself, so though, so so
go ahead and describe that for me and the audience here.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
Yeah, Well, it's kind of similar to a lot of
these channeled cult h channeled books and stuff. The the
way the the the entity speaks is kind of like, uh,
I don't know exactly why it is, but it's it
just has a certain quality to it which is not

(45:48):
it's not like conversational really it's.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
Yes, it's it's it's cryptic. It's very cryptic. Right, there's
all these cryptic messages that you need to pick up on.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
Like there's a book I think it's by T. M. Lherman,
which is on uh speaking in tongues. Okay, And so
there a lot of people who have studied this feel
like when people are doing this, they're not just making
it up. They're like making their brain like do a

(46:20):
certain kind of thing where like like automatic writing, so
it has Look, the actual product has a kind of
quality to it which is different than just like.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
So this is this. This would be a skeptical take
where you're saying, look, they may not be channeling entities, however,
they are altering their consciousness when they're doing this.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
Is that? Right?

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah, going into a different so state.

Speaker 2 (46:47):
Well, it depends on I mean, there's different ways you
could explain it. My explanation is kind of that it
has something to do with like blanking out your own
subjective consciousness and perhaps I don't know what happens after that.

(47:07):
But so the observation here is that, let's say that
we would make that observation that QAnon is like that.
The other thing is that QAnon is like a wikileak source.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
Okay, right, okay, yeah, yeah, it's like, oh look here's
this insider information. And when you're saying I think I'm
just going to point out with QAnon, it's like Q
the character Q is like the the entity that's being
channeled or is that what's going on here?

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Yeah? Okay, yeah, but it's it's like a wikileak source
in its content, which is government secrets. Okay, yeah, Because
so that's kind of where I start.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
Okay, Yeah, because QAnon is supposed, So the identity of
q in the QA non forums is they proclaim that
they're a government insider. They have all this inside information
and they are leaking it to you, the user on
this four ch eight chan forum in cryptographic fashion, like

(48:15):
I'm going to tell you the truth in these cryptograms.
It's up to you to unravel it. But it's all
there for you. I'm giving you all the clues, right yep, Yeah,
I know that much.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
So that's kind of like the core premise of how
I'm trying to analyze it is that it's similar to
these cults, and it's also similar to WikiLeaks what WikiLeaks
was actually doing. And when we look at the material
history of q andon, it includes connections to WikiLeaks and WikiLeaks.

(48:54):
Through the history of Assane includes connections to these kinds
of cults. Okay, and then we can also from that
point everything else that I add to it just through
further research.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
Okay, So you're just noticing the patterns and the similarities
and how the confluence of these different things always seems
to recur. Sure, Okay, very good, All right, let's continue
on with QAnon, What the hell is going on in
this mad house?

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Well after about twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, a lot of
people started to come out and talk about how they
were the one who created QAnon okay, And a lot
of these people would talk about this Cicida thirty three
oh one game. Although the thing about that is that

(49:51):
it's not very clear whether any of those people were
telling the truth or like how much of what they
said was true or not. So it's it's very ambiguous
about any actual origin of like who was making those posts.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Okay, So you're getting something where it's like, hey, this
is the real QAnon, but at the same time you're
not getting any proof of anything.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
Yep, okay, And a lot of people who are like
professional journalists think that it was like Ron Watkins, who
is the guy who works at eight chan.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Yeah, those were the that was the guy in the
Philippines living is that right?

Speaker 2 (50:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (50:35):
Yeah, I saw that documentary. I think that was on
HBO even right.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Uh yeah, Well there was a HBO one and there
was a VICE one. But it's it's not clear who
made QAnon, but it is clear that there's a history
leading back through the Cicada thirty three oh one stuff,
which the people who were involved in that were also
involved with the Seth Rich story, promoting that there's some

(51:05):
connections to Michael Flynn in some of those people, as
well as other just weird stuff that they're connected to,
including like those same types of cults and like new
age techno culty stuff. Interesting. Yeah, And so that's kind

(51:25):
of the immediate prehistory of QAnon in from the years
of like twenty fifteen to like when it actually occurred,
involves very ambiguous, like some arg stuff. I mean, I
guess we could talk about Pizzagate, but I guess we

(51:47):
already did.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
Yeah, because pizzagate Wiki Leaks was in on the pizza
Gate story, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
I mean they even made some posts on Twitter that
we're seeming to like point to, like stuff that would
promote Pizzagate within the leaks.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Okay, all right, So okay, Yeah, So that's the pizza
Gate thing was huge in spurring on QAnon. I would
say sort of QAnon was was born out of that
in part Is that right?

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Or am I wrong? Yeah? And Pizzagate in particular was huge,
and getting Trump elected in twenty sixteen, the timing for
that was perfect. For just the perfect impact right before
the election got it. Yeah, it was.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
It was the perfect storm, so to speak. It was
what and what we're talking about is an election that
was one on the premise that we're going to overthrow
the deep state. We're going to do so by the
means that we've learned through these alternate reality games that

(53:06):
we've been playing for so long. It almost culminated in
this election.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
Is this right? Am I on the right track? Yeah?
I mean a lot of people would be skeptical of
saying that this stuff caused Trump to win, But if
you actually witnessed it, I don't think you would think that.
And even if you were just somebody who was on
Twitter during the twenty sixteen election season and saw how

(53:38):
the entire platform was flooded with that stuff, Yeah, it
seems perfectly plausible. And all of that, like the whole
meme war stuff comes from these techniques of like basically
like techno occultism, chaos, magic, controlling. Yeah, and even the

(54:04):
people who are doing it a lot of times seem
to like not actually believe in it, because that's the
thing is that you're just doing it for fun.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
But yeah, there's an inherent nihilism in all this too.
That gets utilized over and over again. Yeah, because it
makes the participants they get a feeling as though they're
doing something but they're not culpable. At the same time,
it seems like like they can get away with it
without having any consequence.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
Yeah, that's definitely part of it.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
There's a lot going on here.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
Why that's that part of it has been has been
addressed more because a lot of the mainstream coverage of
it has focused on they know, like the sociopathic troll culture.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
Yes, yes, it has. I feel like the mainstream is
trying to play ketchup on all this stuff, and to
a degree they're doing it, but there's always a depth
to this that's lacking, Like I never see anybody getting
all the way there for lack of a better term,
and being kind of ambiguous. But you can't help but

(55:15):
to be because of the nature of this, and that's
why this is so tricky, I think.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Yeah, and a lot of people in the mainstream, when
they get to the deeper parts of the stuff, they
will actually start to say, like this is conspiracy theory
and therefore this can't be what really happened. Yeah, they
think that it's actually encouraging the worldview of like what

(55:44):
they think they're trying to combat. If they start to
speculate about like this weird stuff that happened, and so
they will just say that that's not what happened. It
was just like uh, Jim Watkins.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Yeah, that's interesting. But it's almost like this system of
getting things done to me, I see the results, so
that speaks for itself, but almost has this built in
immunity where as you're describing, nobody can challenge it.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
I think occultism generally has that, Yeah, because people can't
believe that it's effective, and so to the extent that
it is effective, people can use it without nobody's gonna
like put someone in jail for this. Even like the
QAnon stuff, there's people out there who have like behaved

(56:36):
in completely like ways that should be illegal, ways that
have caused extreme levels of harm to other people, but
there's nothing that they could be charged with. Yes, and
that's the same thing as saying, like nobody's going to
charge somebody for like being like a magician. Yes, very interesting.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
This is all fascinating and I love this, but I
have to say, why we're towards the end of an hour,
and I think, I mean, we may as well just
end it here, unless would you really like to continue
talking or would it be okay just say hey, we'll
pick up with this again. We'll keep talking if we
want to. No, this is good, okay, cool, Yeah, I'm
right there with you, man, So we'll end this episode here.

(57:22):
I want to thank you for returning to the show.
This is great, and are you open to coming back
and continuing this talk?

Speaker 2 (57:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (57:30):
Okay, okay, Well, we'll stay in contact and we'll see
how we feel and what we might want to talk about.
But for now, why don't you once again let people
know where your article series on this is how they
can find that.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
It's at medium dot com, slash at y h L
y two F.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
Okay, thank you very much, and I will put the
link to that once again in the post to the
age of transitions in this Why before you go? It's it.
I've been thinking about this. We've got QAnon and you
are you have become why Ann? Is that okay? Or

(58:08):
do you not want? Do you not want that to
be the case?

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Well? I was thinking about that too, but it's kind
of like already done. So I mean, I can just
say that I'm not why then, but I think I
think QAnon actually said that as well. I think I
think QAnon posted and said, like, I'm just que I'm
not QAnon. So but regardless, I'm I can't uh, I

(58:36):
can't be that because like I'm not doing what QAnon does.
I'm just like, uh like doing the opposite, So like
I can't be so.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
I'm just I'm giving you a hard time, man, I'm
I'm having some but yes, once again, thank you for
coming back and we'll see. Well, I've been having a
lot of fun with this and I can't recommend your
articles enough to people, So go check that out everybody.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Age
of Transitions. There's no new Uncle the podcast this week.

(59:07):
Just hang on next week Uncle and I will be
back with a live show and everything. So thank you
for your patience. In the meantime, go back into the feed.
There's hundreds of episodes. If you want to listen to
something that you haven't listened to before. My name is
Aaron Franz uh. The Age of Transitions dot com is

(59:28):
a website. As always, I will leave you by saying
seeker Seek on

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