Hey guys, this one's a doozy! I thought this story was worthy of being told. I already feel better having written it all out.
But if long-winded diatribes aren't your cup of tea, I won't be offended if you skip this one. ngl though, it's got some juicy bits. I'd love to know how all of this jives with the experiences and observations of many of you out there.
On the Night of the Digital Long Knives, they came for me first. Before Trump was banned and before they Thanosed half of social media, they got me.
In the early hours of January 7, 2021, US Senator Tammy Duckworth emphatically declared in Congress that “reddit conspiracy theories” were in part to blame for the “violent insurrection” alleged to have occurred just hours earlier at the US Capitol.
No further clarification was provided as to which conspiracies from the popular social media site were responsible, nor how this conclusion was reached within hours of such an historically unprecedented and controversial event.
The administrators of reddit acted swiftly. The admins traditionally only “spring” into action when confronted with negative PR. Getting publicly called out in Congress after an alleged “coup” was about as high profile as it gets. Within hours, they removed and permanently banned the head moderator of the “subreddit” devoted to conspiracy theories…yours truly.
While the admins are actual employees of reddit, moderators are unpaid volunteers who focus on specific “sub”-reddits. Moderators are a crucial component of how the site functions. They hold no power outside their respective communities and are beholden to the whims of the admins. A case can be made that the sweeping censorship that reached a fever pitch in January was coordinated between rogue elements of multiple world governments and the Big Tech juggernaut. On reddit, I was one of many targeted in this technological purge.
Reddit wasn’t always a vapid repository for propaganda amplification. Once a pioneer of counter-culture and niche interests, reddit has long since devolved into the same cliche caricature of an echo chamber currently engulfing the “mainstream” web under the ruthless dominance of Big Tech. But it wasn’t always like that.
The very first threads on reddit were 9/11 conspiracy theories and challenged the status quo. And yet, 15 years later, the front page of reddit consists of vacuous corporatist and statist propaganda, with the vast majority of unique subreddits having long since been compromised or banned by the “narrative managers” tasked with homogenizing these once vibrant and diverse forums.
I joined reddit in its early days. I enjoyed the anonymity and the ability to create novelty accounts for memes and other silly interests. In 2007, the pro-libertarian bent on reddit introduced me to Ron Paul, and the enthusiasm to “Audit the Fed!” and hold the financial institutions accountable resonated strongly. I grew up marveling at the mindless stupidity of US disasters in Vietnam and elsewhere. I thought similar mistakes wouldn’t be made again. But then I lost friends in Iraq & Afghanistan, and the red-pilling that began on 9/11 proceeded in earnest.
I was the “perfect” age for 9/11. I was old enough to think for myself but not too old that indoctrination prevented the red flags from going off in my skeptical and developing mind. I saw the Bush/Cheney neocons as the heart of the corruption of that era, but soon became wary of the progressive “saviors” in Obama/Biden. This concern played out on reddit in a very dramatic and informative way.
The support I saw for Ron Paul was inspiring and genuine. The “movement” for Obama appeared hollow and manufactured. This was the first time I noticed that much of the activity on reddit, especially politically, was starting to become inorganic. I soon suspected that Obama was being propped up to win, and reddit was being used in the massive effort to re-enforce the two party false dichotomy. This requires constant political ping-ponging of the balance of power to maintain the optics that the public still picks the POTUS.
After the orchestrated financial debacle of 2008, I began focusing my attention on sharing more “conspiratorial” content on reddit. By 2010 I discovered a small subreddit devoted to speculation about conspiracy theories (reddit.com/r/conspiracy). I decided to make an account (u/axolotl_peyotl) devoted exclusively to this type of content.
I began sharing as much fringe and speculative material as I could muster. At one point, I was the third most prolific contributor in the history of r/conspiracy. I even had threads calling out the “banksters” hit the front page of reddit. Amusingly enough, this usually was via the politics subreddit (r/politics), which today is notorious for exclusively broadcasting state-sponsored propaganda.
I didn’t even believe a lot of the conspiracies I was sharing. That’s what made the early iterations of sites like reddit so popular in the first place. We were free to speculate about whatever we wanted without fear of getting mocked or doxxed. I was thoroughly enjoying the stimulating topics and interaction on r/conspiracy. I looked forward to the “debunking” as much as the “high octane” speculation. But the more I posted, the more I began to notice unmistakable patterns in the comment sections of certain threads.
Most wacky conspiracy theories would produce a completely innocuous and frequently constructive response on the forum. For example, you could speculate about aliens and ancient civilizations without being given too much grief. You could also call out events like the JFK assassination and CIA coups without much resistance. In other words, subjects that were both “far out there” and clearly valid and therefore impossible to “debunk” were generally left alone.
Other conspiracies, however, seemed to poke a proverbial digital hornet’s nest. It happened so consistently with these “trigger” topics that it was difficult to miss. This handful of seemingly unrelated issues would consistently bring out reddit accounts that were not frequent r/conspiracy contributors. They also seemed to be almost entirely devoted to spreading FUD and engaging in a wide array of forum sliding tactics and logical fallacies.
While there were undoubtedly others, the following issues would often elicit the most dramatic and artificial reactions: 9/11, Israel, Russia, GMOs/Monsanto, and vaccines. Later, staged shootings like Sandy Hook were added to the fray, while botched cover-ups like the Las Vegas Shooting were generally ignored completely. When the staged event goes awry, they often opt to memory-hole it instead.
Over time, the energy spent obfuscating these various topics was diverted almost entirely to the subject of defending scientism, Big Pharma, and the vaccine paradigm. Certain keywords in titles would bring out a combination of shills (digital provocateurs) and bots (fake accounts with automated replies) to derail the thread and often attack the OP (original poster). For example, the pro-Monsanto/GMO shill squad on reddit used to be as dedicated as it was pervasive, with some accounts boasting a history of thousands of comments defending these mega corporations.
Before the social justice warrior PC police fully infested social media, reddit was more than happy to allow subs devoted to racism, sexism, and even the use of slurs in the titles of the forums themselves. Eventually, the corporate overlords and the MSM would force reddit to “clean” up its act, but its “unsavory” past is a matter of record.
The subreddit “r/conspiratard” was one such hotbed for the corporatist hacks tasked with correcting the record on reddit. It was largely comprised of useful unpaid idiots as well as actual sponsored actors for these predatory conglomerates and state agencies.
With the blatantly suspicious “suicide” of reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz in early 2013, and long-standing rumors of connections between reddit’s owners and unsavory government agencies, the site was targeted for transformation into a massive narrative-management machine to be integrated into Big Tech’s burgeoning monopoly.
r/conspiratard was one of many subs that existed primarily to orchestrate the manipulation of the votes and comments of threads on r/conspiracy and elsewhere on reddit. This practice is known as “brigading” and almost always is in direct violation of reddit’s user agreement. These brigades would often initiate ruthless targeted harassment towards many accounts that shared information that was deemed “inconvenient.” r/conspiratard was also ground zero for the most prolific Monsanto shills on reddit, as well as the most fervently pro-Israel.
A frequent meme employed on r/conspiratard was a mocking reference to “pancakes” which symbolized the death of Rachel Corrie, an Israeli activist for Palestinian rights who was brutally murdered. The “pancakes” meme often littered the front page of r/conspiratard, a fairly blunt indication of the degree of perversion festering within their ranks.
Whenever a topic on r/conspiracy arose that these shills were tasked with “debunking,” they would quickly swarm the relevant threads, often engaging in substantial and extremely aggressive abuse against specific users. While explicitly in violation of the user agreement, this type of coordinated harassment has historically been condoned and even encouraged by the reddit admins. There are countless cases of the admins outright ignoring extreme threats and other offenses if they originate from these “approved” digital henchmen.
Although they were aggressive, they were sloppy. If you were paying attention, you could find out which narratives were being systematically curated. For example, initially the complaints about Israel were simply not on my radar. It seemed to me that the tired “teh jews did it!” trope was almost always a a myopic misdirection.
But then I shared a thread about the USS Liberty incident, an event that was completely unknown to me at the time. The degree of vitriol and harassment hurled my way for simply posting about the 1967 tragedy that saw three dozen Americans murdered by Israel was beyond excessive and extremely thought-provoking. Not only that, the same accounts that would crucify you for questioning Monsanto seemed to be tasked with making sure no one discussed the USS Liberty and similar staged events. And those same accounts would flood your thread with “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” if you tried to have an honest discussion about 9/11.
Eventually, they gave up on Monsanto when it was blisteringly obvious the “science” they were tasked to defend was actually genocidal. They also largely moved on from protecting Israel when it was no longer as politically expedient. And 9/11 was being memory-holed faster every day, so less effort was spent there. After all, an entire generation had emerged in its wake, and most have no idea just how bad that particular deception truly was.
Where did the shill energy go on reddit? It went almost entirely to prop up the next phase of social engineering. This was primarily centered around unquestioning devotion to Big Pharma and the vaccine industry.
By 2012 it was clear that the neocons were old news, and that neoliberalism was the new weapon du jour for the oligarchical sociopaths. I watched, stunned, as the so-called “leftists” that once denounced the illegal and immoral Iraq and Afghanistan wars did a clown-world-worthy about-face and ignored or even cheered on further US coups and coup attempts in Libya, Syria and elsewhere abroad.
While the Ron Paul movement was still present in 2012, I realized Obama would be chosen again. The sheer amount of pro-Obama propaganda littering the front page of reddit made it even more obvious. The effort to sway public opinion was relentless. It had begun to consume the digital landscape.
By the “re-election” of Obama, I was largely disinterested in politics. Instead, I was fully submerged in the most “fringe” conspiracies I could find. I preferred reading about high ancient civilizations and exotic technology like anti-gravity. I didn’t necessarily believe in all of this speculation but I sure loved talking about it. After all, the discussions they generated could be as informative as the linked information itself.
In December 2012, I composed a thread on r/conspiracy discussing the “occult” numerology used on 9/11 and how it could be used to predict the next major staged or “false flag” event. I had just read a book that focused on manipulated school shootings as false flags, with the author arguing that Christmastime of 2012 was a strong possibility for the next major staged event in the US.
Using what I was learning about numerology, I considered that the number “11” might be relevant to a potential 9/11 “ritual” and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect another false flag 11 years after 9/11, in 2012. I realize this might sound utterly fantastical to the vast majority of the population, but that’s just the kind of stuff we loved to speculate about on r/conspiracy.
Following the Christmas angle, I specifically chose December 14 as the day to write my warning. Within hours, the news of Sandy Hook broke, prompting me to proclaim, “I find it extremely unnerving that a sacrificial attack was carried out today in Connecticut, 11 days before this hypothetical Black Christmas.”
Just a coincidence? Probably. But one thing is clear: Sandy Hook was not orchestrated to “get our guns.” Sandy Hook was extreme state-sponsored terrorism and emotional manipulation, and a weaponized assault on the conspiracy theory and alternative research community. The saga of Alex Jones with respect to Sandy Hook speaks volumes. For many years all conspiracy theorists were equated with “Sandy Hook deniers” and the shill army on reddit responded accordingly.
Sandy Hook wasn’t my only “prediction.” I learned from r/occult that mid-April to May was an ancient pagan season of sacrifice by fire and that many false flags and other staged tragedies occur during this time. I used my developing pattern-recognition tactics on reddit to determine that a major event was being planned in April, 2013. As a result, I warned that a “fiery” false flag may be imminent. Two days later, the Boston Bombing occurred.
Years later, when I realized this season begins in earnest on April 15, I gave this warning on April 14, predicting an occult sacrifice by fire. The following day saw the near destruction of Notre Dame in Paris, one of the single most occult symbolism-ridden buildings ever constructed.
Early on, I noticed my account started to attract considerably more attention. Although I got a great deal of positive encouragement from r/conspiracy, I also began routinely receiving threats in my private messages, and the brigades against my account picked up in earnest. They started ranting and raving that we were even daring to mention topics like “numerology” and the occult...and on a conspiracy forum of all places!
Why not just let us be? Why not just let us talk about silly things like numbers on a fringe forum? Why did our wide-eyed speculation even matter to them? Ironically, if they’d just left us alone I might never have discovered their “sore” subjects, so to speak.
Very interesting. I read up on your thread and the other disasters that have happened in April.
The days don't line up exactly but the worst coal mining disaster in history happened 26 April 1942 (in China). Coal mines either burn or go boom.