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Dead Internet Theory, JFK & Trump Shooting with Joey Avery

1h 17m 51s

Dead Internet Theory, JFK & Trump Shooting with Joey Avery

The internet is increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence and bots, with over 50% of online traffic now generated by automated systems. Data from the Imperva Bad Bot Report and other studies reveal that bots outnumber humans, and by 2026, up to 90% of online content may be synthetic. This technological shift has intensified misinformation, with deepfakes—like the AI-generated audio of Slovak journalist Monica Tóth—being used to manipulate public opinion and swing elections. Trends show that emotionally charged content, especially rage-based "rage bait," spreads faster and is algorithmically rewarded, leading to radicalization and polarization. Political events, such as the 2026 assassination attempt on Trump and the false-flag campaign in Slovakia, have been met with widespread skepticism, with 70–75% of Americans questioning official narratives. The phenomenon is further fueled by coordinated bot campaigns, AI-driven disinformation, and the deliberate use of fake content to provoke outrage. As social media platforms acknowledge mass bot activity, the public’s trust in online information erodes. The result is a chaotic digital landscape where reality is increasingly perceived as fabricated, and users struggle to distinguish between authentic and synthetic content—highlighting a crisis of trust in both technology and shared truth.

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More than half of everything you encounter online right now was not made by a human, but by bots specifically targeting your psyche. A mysterious Twitter account posted the full name of an assassin two and a half years before he ever made his move. A foreign intelligence agency cloned a journalist's voice and used it to swing a national election. A quarter of the country believes that the most documented assassination attempt in American history was staged and the people who benefit the most from all of this, the lies, the chaos, the doubt, don't even have to create theories online anymore because we are churning it out ourselves. Today we're going to lay out all the top stories, the theories, and show exactly how we got here to a confusing and chaotic virtual world that is ultimately messing with our reality. We're going to go through the data, the deepfakes, and the dormant accounts to find where reality stopped being something that we all agreed on and became something that we now struggled to even decipher. The false flags are being fabricated and circulated online. It is a strange time to be alive and it's about to get a whole lot stranger. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. What's up people and welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Gagnon and thank you for joining me in my tent where every week we explore the most interesting fascinating controversial stories from around the world from all time forever and always that is what I do here in the tent. But before I begin, I just want to say a few things. First off, thank you, dude and lady. I want to say thank you for tuning into this episode. Every time you click on an episode of this podcast, you keep the lights on here in the campsite and you keep the fire burning here in the tent. And real quick, I just want to give a big shout out to my good pal. How are you Chris? What's up Chris? There's no time because we also have a very prestigious guest. His name is Joey Avery. How are you? Great to be here Mark. I mean, truly one of the regular, regular guests of the show and I would say the MVP guest of the year. We got to start throwing out guests of the year. I feel like I would be in heavy contention there. Yeah. Who else would you put up for that? Um, I don't know Randall Carlson. He's archaeologist. He knew a lot about like sacred geometry and stuff and the younger dress impact theory. He was pretty smart. Yeah, but what about the vibes? Yeah. I mean, that's fair. As far as vibes, you were cracking me up way more than he does. Yeah, 100 percent, dude. Yeah. Now we have a very fascinating episode. Also, my pal David's here, but he's drinking a cold brew. Um, now this is an interesting episode that I was chit chatting with you about before. This is going to kind of go all across the board here. Okay. And the thing that kind of I, uh, that hooked me onto a really deep dive into this is dead internet theory. Are you familiar with this? I am. Now I guess before we even jump into that, how real do you feel like reality is? Do you feel like it's broken down? What a question. How real do I feel like reality is like reality like if like my perception of reality, but don't you feel like you go online and just doesn't feel like anything's real? Like people are mad and then you meet people in real life and they're not mad and then people are concerned about something in like your hometown that no one's talking about and on the internet and you're like, what is actually real? Yeah. I feel like the antidote to being chronically online is as they say touching grass and when you like go outside like because you go online and you're like, everyone is an idiot and everyone is saying crazy stuff and the world is falling apart and then you go out and you see a friend, you know, meet a stranger and you watch a sunset and you're like, yeah, maybe it is okay. Now there's a few antidotes actually and I think, at the end of the episode I have kind of like my sort of little, I guess checklist for how to like not completely lose my mind, but I guess more the phenomenon of the thing is in. Yeah, exactly. Zen and Colbert will kind of, we'll kind of level you out. And now Lely Ultra, shout it to y'all. It's a great new, that was so great. No nicotine actually in those. You can just take them all day and you feel great, no jittery crash afterwards. Anyway, this feels sponsored. 20% off with the coach. Actually, if you go to tri-ultra.com, anyway, it doesn't matter, but I just think that there is a moment where like it just feels like things aren't real. And I will talk to people that existed even pre like 2017. And they're like, yeah, the internet used to be fun. Like used to be like, you would go on Reddit or you go on Facebook and it would be like, let me put it out for you. How about E-bombs worlds? Yeah, dude. E-bombs worlds. It was fun. 2D games. 100% dude. Like, the early internet had something about it. That was just innocent. I talk a lot about this in my current set on the road, joeyevery.com while we're doing plugs. But, uh, but it really it did. I think when the internet first came out, there was like a feeling that it was going to save the world. And now we've come so far that it feels like everyone feels like it's destroying the world. Yeah, I mean, I will say technology like the internet as well as like AI and kind of virtually everything else smartphones. Like, basically any massive categorical innovation, I think bifurcates the human experience. So it makes it almost equal directions better and worse at the same time. Yeah. So it's like I can have a career. I can tell people about my show and my dates and the, you know, promote ultra. I can do all of that because the internet, but also I don't know what to believe. I feel like I'm in like just a persistent state of malaise. I have like kind of just apathy about, you know, terrible events. This is something San Jose talks about all the time. He's like, I need a war to really even get me fired up. All right. I don't even think a war would work out. You must be a pig and shit. You've really come to the right era. Like you just see something. You're like, oh, another shooting. Okay. All right. Oh, this Congressman was like assaulting everyone. All right. It just like nothing matters anymore here. Random optimists have spent on that. Will that make the incentive to do horrible things potentially go down because nobody even fucking cares anymore. That's a great point. It used to be like, we're going to do this horrible event to shock people. And now it's like, oh, okay, when you made a backpack experience, you're a copycat. Who cares? You've seen that before. Yeah. Why don't you make it? Why don't you go paint? Yeah, right? That is a good point. We knew the trench coat mafia. Right. I don't know any of these new mafias. No, no one gives a shit. Now, if you feel like the internet is falling apart and that, you know, your grip on reality is holding on by a thread. You're not alone. Because there's many people that have felt this and one of the major attributing, I guess, features of it is potentially this dead internet theory. Now, if you don't know what it is, let me break it down. Basically, the idea first started to percolate on a fringe internet form in like 2021. And it was like, okay, so it actually was, I think, posted in January of 2021 on this place called a Goro Rhodes Macintosh Cafe. This is like this obscure forum for like low-fi hip hop and like vapor wave stuff and like the occasional conspiracy theory. Pretty sure a little hang out. And there's that a user called Illuminati Pirate. And basically, he has this thing titled the dead internet theory, most of the internet is fake. And the core claim is that the internet died around 2016, 2017. And when you scroll now on the internet, the internet is just bots and AI. And he argued that these networks coordinated with corporations and governments to turn users into quotes, submissive consumers, calling it an AI-powered gaslighting of the entire world population. My question would be, is he saying that governments worked together on it or just by each government trying to introduce bots for their own sake? It's led to a preponderance of them. It doesn't specify. Because I got to imagine we worked with Russia on it. But if Russia is like, hey, let's get a bunch of bots that make Americans pissed about their politics and we, you know, have a bunch of bots going over to Russia. Yeah, I think that's your vodka sucks, you pussy. Yeah, exactly. I think that's more the claim. Is it like our government has bots that are running to push their agendas and maybe even like rogue agents within government parties. And even a step further now, I've been seeing some articles about bands and social media influencers that have hired PR firms that basically push their content out there so it can feel like they're everywhere. Right, you're referring to geese here. I know, I just, I did that because David is pissed off in the corner, but it isn't just geese, other people too, but yes, something of a legend about geese. Now, the geese thing, in my opinion, I think it's completely overblown because it's like, yeah, they just did digital marketing and the age of digital marketing that we exist in is not on billboards and TV. It's on your phone. It is like matriculating through all different types of like meme pages and stuff. I read that article and I wasn't like, "Oh, geese sucks." I was like, "Oh, this PR firm slaps." Yeah. And I would hire them. Yeah. This is the, it's not illegal. This is the game we're playing. I mean, even going further back, this is the whole Andrew Tate thing initially was like, okay, his account was banned. He wasn't even posting his own shit. He had a bunch of in-cell dorks to follow him and be basically gamified. You have to post my clips. Now the clips were good. That's why they worked. Yeah. But you shit pump them everywhere. And the algorithm's like, "Oh, everyone's talking about this." 100% you go. Now I would even go to say that like every meme page you follow, like I would say like half to like 70% of the content is paid for. Yeah. Even the content that feels organic and fun and you're like, "Oh, they're just posting this because it's interesting." It's like, no, they're posting because like the management team of this rapper paid them to post it. And maybe it's a good piece of content like ontologically. But it's often so see-through too. A lot of times it's like, "Oh my god, bro snapped off on this one." And it's like, "Who? What?" It cares. What really pisses me off is it's even wedged into like AI. If you're asking chat GPT for recommendation, what's the best restaurant? Ooh, for a guy like you, how about this? Secretly that restaurant was funding. Yeah. They're trying to block us. Yeah, dude. Now dead internet theory will go farther to say that even the accounts that you're interacting with are fake. So like all of them, she loves me. No, no, no, no, no. What? Nope, nope, nope. You're, you're, you're, you're a little, uh, my friend. a little Snapchat AI is not real, okay, fuck. And these are the women in your DMs, all right? - What? - Yes. - That's not possible. - It is possible, and it actually is verified, and I'm gonna pull up this stat in a second. But basically, the claim is that like over 50% of the people that you're dealing with on the internet are actually not people. They're just APIs. - I think 50% is high. - Well, I'm gonna prove you wrong. So in September of 2021, the Atlantic's Caitlin Tiffany published this article in the Atlantic, maybe you missed it, but the internet died five years ago. And she went on in the article to say that it was ridiculous, but then closed it up saying it's wrong, but it feels true, which is interesting framing. Now, April 2025, there's something called the Imperva Bad Bot Report. And this is a firm owned by the Defense Contractor Thales. And for the first time in a day-- - Thales. - Thales, ALES. - Okay, just pull 'em up. - Sounds like someone with a list who's in sales. - Thales? - In sales. - I'm in sales. (laughing) - I'm in sales and marketing. - Wait, do the list? He's like, no, I work for Thales. - I work for Thales. (laughing) - Thales. I'm one of the best sellers. Coffee for clothing. - Okay, now you do have a list. - Okay, sorry. - So for the first time in a decade, from this Imperva Bad Bot Report, bots outnumber human traffic by one percent. 51% of all the traffic happening on the internet. According to the Imperva Bad Bot Report is bots. That is shocking. Now there's another study, Stamford and Imperial College of London and the internet archive. Also did that. They did another sort of independent study. Over 35% of new websites are now AI-generated or AI-assisted. Nearly 18% are fully AI-made with no human author. So now the sites are 35% AI or AI-assisted. And then the people engaging with these sites and the comments and the reviews and the people uploading and downloading, those are also AI. So now you're just interfacing in this fake matrix world. And EuroPole also did this by the end of 2026, up to 90% of online content may be synthetic. Pretty crazy. Alexis O'Hanian from a Reddit co-founder called the Modern Internet Dead. - Damn. - Yeah, Serena Williams, a husband. - Bad boy. - Yeah. And he basically blamed quasi AI LinkedIn Slop in a recent post. Now the original version of this had like a conspiratorial tone that the government and corporations were deliberately flooding the web as a social control mechanism to get people to buy stuff. I don't put it past them. - Yeah. - It's not really able to be proven. - Like, yeah, do we, there's a 0% chance that the CIA or whatever hasn't tried influencing thoughts with bots. - Thoughts with bots? - Yeah. - Another great website coming up. - They had bots. - Thoughts, exactly. - And you know, that's, I guess AI becomes probably a good thing, you know? - Yeah, I go back and forth on that. - I'm like, 'cause then what do we do with all the damaged people, exactly? - Where are they supposed to work? - Just the Amazon workshop. - Yeah, yeah, that's no fun for them. - But I'm like, on the one hand, I'm like it drifts into like, okay, you can make anything ever. - Yeah, that's not, that's just gonna break your brain. - That's gonna break your brain. - But at the same time, you're not exploiting women. - Right. - You know, the women are not in these cycles of exploitation. - But then it's like, if we wanna go down this, it's like, are they really being exploited if they're consenting sex workers who enjoy their craft of getting absolutely pummeled and squirting on their sheets? - Unfortunately, I think the nature of capitalism and the market that we live in is what is exploiting them and us, rise up comrades. Anyway, now, yeah. The original tone is conspiratorial, all right? Like, there's saying that it's a conspiracy. But the real data does show that there is like, cheap AI and AdFraud and Gart engagement farming at a massive scale. Bigger than we've ever seen or maybe you could even like, I really predict, like by the end of 2026 allegedly, 90% is going to be completely made up. And this came from 2021 on a random forum. Pretty wild. Has anyone tried to track down that person? I mean, it could have just been a guy with like a decent idea who's like, saw where it was going. Like, you know what I mean? - Yeah. - And I think he's completely right. - Yeah. - I mean, not completely right, but like, largely right. Especially two years before AI was even in like the mainstream. - Yeah, 'cause it wasn't at that time that easy to throw it out, but now it's like, it just, it seems like at the rate things are happening in a year, everything's gonna look completely different. - Yeah. - Now, to add on to that, there's another weird little ripple on this and this is something that came up through Twitter sort of publishing the locations of all these Twitter accounts. That you have people that run like, you know, Tim Maga. - Yeah. - You know, 25 years ago. - Fuck made in America. - Exactly. - He's like, I love American, they rage bait like crazy. They post just like pictures of black people and they're like, who would elect this guy? Like, it's just like racist rage baiting like in "Sanship." - And then that-- - Based in Ukraine. - Yeah. - That accounts in Ukraine is in Pakistan and in India. And my assumption there is it's perhaps governments, but I also think now that there is a financial incentive on Twitter, aka.com, that you're getting this perverse incentive for people to just basically create rage-bait content to piss off Americans for money. - Right, and they yeah, they get that money. But think about how much fun it would be to just be a fucking Pakistani dude. Like I've gotten Maga, you know? Just posting crazy shit all the time. - That's the thing, 'cause we could flip it on him. We could be like, hey, we're gonna be like big like Modi guys, just like just pump Modi content. Just rage, just enrage everyone else in it. - Is really comedy. - Yeah, you can do that. You can do that. - But yeah, no, that would be funny. I think the only problem with most Americans is we don't actually know enough about the politics of any other place to do it effectively. - Yeah, unfortunately. - But it'd be worth increasing Vigine. - Yeah, they love that, yeah. - Who are you voting for Bob or Vigine? - It's like, oh man, oh it's a tough one. - Now the dead internet section proves that most web traffic isn't healing. All right, based off of these reports, if we take them at face value. - And I do, but I think that there's some level of like, I imagine sophistication is getting better, but there's also stuff that we all immediately recognize like bought bullshit. Like if you go to the comment section on one of those meme pages you mentioned and it's just like a million photos of the same girls ass being like, you better not watch my story unless you wanna come. - Yeah. - And it's just like a hundred of those on like a video of like a car crash or something. - And for every hundred of those, I do think there are some that are sophisticated enough to pull people in. And maybe like, I've seen some that are really clever where like someone will comment on like an episode that I do. And a guy talks about like how like mushroom saved his life. And now it's gonna be in the comments of this video. But like people being like, dude, mushrooms like really cured me of all my anxiety and PTSD. And then a comment underneath from a different account will say, oh, where'd you get them from? And he's like, oh, I got them from here. - Yeah. - Now all those comments in the threat are fake. - Yeah. - But it feels real. So to the point where I was reading it being like, oh, maybe I should, wait, hold on. - Yeah. - Because what's happening is it's absurd. Now, bad bots, the ones that are malicious and like mimicking like human behavior hit 37% of traffic in 2024. Up from 32%. This is the sixth straight year of growth. And if the trend holds, it's only gonna grow more and more. And you know, these machines, they kind of want you angry. Like the algorithms want you to be pissed off. They want you to keep on scrolling in outrage is one of the most reliable fuels to do that. So rage bait was actually Oxford's 2025 word of the year. And the usage of that word rage bait tripled and content built to provoke anger also is multiplied like significantly. And it's not just a vibe. There's a 2017 Princeton NYU study of 5,563,312 tweets found each moral emotion word boosted a post spread by 20%. A 2025 replication of basically a million confirmed this same exact finding. The like emotional, like moral emotion words is the thing that's going to boost it. So think of like a moral emotion word. Like you must like beyond the right side of history. These types of things like wrap people up. - Right. - Like saving our country, save your children. Like these types of things is ultimately like what makes things spread. So of course things that are more salacious are gonna spread around the internet. But everything's become reality show. - Yeah, in a way, right? And there's even more studies to like back this up. So a 2021 Yale study, 12 million tweets from 7,000 users found people rewarded with likes for outrage, lean to post more outrage over time. So you post something that's a little outrageous and then you just become more and more outrageous than you get caught in the case caption. - We're all getting trained by the algorithm. You learn what works, you lean into that and you keep going. - Yeah. - And unfortunately, politically moderate users in that study were the most sensitive to that reward. So the system radicalizes the middle most effectively. - Interesting, because you don't have as much of a belief. So it's easy to get pulled one way or another. - Yeah, I'm presuming like you're like the most, I mean one, it's like the biggest chunk of the population. I think most people are in the moderate section. And those are the people that are like, probably the least gripped by their identity or like their beliefs. - If you're not ideological, you are kind of looking at what's going on and being like, I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. And if you can move that window. - Yeah. - And Facebook had a leaked document and it found that it weighted angry emoji reactions 5x to the plain literal thumbs up. (laughing) So if you got like one angry, that was worth five likes basically. - Entertainment is built to make you feel something. - It's just crazy. And then there's another one. So 2024 scientific report study that the extinction rebellion protests found that during heated periods, bots. influenced humans more than humans influence bots. So users who interact with bots turn measurably more negative afterwards. And this idea of astroturfing. - Well, yeah, no shit, bots don't have an interaction with humans and are like, what is my purpose? Why have I been so angry? - But in certain cases, you can deal with AI's to like make them become a little bit more negotiable. But that would come down to the person who's training them and the person who's trying to generate rage is not gonna do that. - Exactly. - So like, you have these bots that are specifically cranked up in volume and manufacturing this fight in the comments to make things seem more crazy than they actually are. - So obviously I hate this and I think it's bad for society, but have we considered making our own bot armies? - Ooh, for what? - To tell everyone to chill out. (laughing) - To tell everybody like, hey, just so you know, most of these things are bots, including me, and you should probably wonder why the most inflammatory language is getting your mental dick so hard. - Yeah, I mean, this is kind of a small little bot army right here. - Right. - 100%. - Do you need a creesose, David? - The thoughts. - Yeah, exactly. - The thoughts of bots. - The Thales team. - Now what's crazy is that Facebook is kind of at least like tacitly admitted that this is a part of what's going on. So the companies publish the numbers straight up. Meta removed 100 million plus Facebook pages in 2024 for fake engagement and impersonation. And then 500,000 accounts action for fake spam engagement. 10 million profiles removed for impersonating real creators. And Meta named this tactic plainly. Networks that hijack comment sections with scripted comments and follows and then began hiding comments flagged as coordinated. And that's just what they caught. - Yeah. - Which is just crazy because now that these things are getting they'll learn how to get around it. AI will learn how to avoid the, you know. - Yeah. - Hey guys, I just want to take a break really quick to tell you about cash app. I love cash app, I use it all the time. If you know anything about me, I try to make my life less chaotic 'cause I travel a lot, I got kid, I got a wife. And I'm just doing stuff, I'm buying coffee, I'm just living my life and cash app makes it so easy. 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They can find domestic voices and then amplify them. So now you can amplify these people who are already doing this. And so you have these fake, you know, the fake crowd is the delivery system. So bots don't need to convince you of anything. They can just flood the zone with so much conversation around a topic to make this manufacturer consensus feel like the most logical and inevitable outcome. Wasn't there something that proved that that kind of happened with Nick Fuentes to some degree? In what way? I believe there was a lot of bot traffic that helped elevate him to becoming, you know. Obviously he was a fringe voice, but then he was someone that everyone kind of started talking to. And a lot of it apparently seemed to be botted traffic during a certain period. Now from who, for what reason? Was it him? Was it an actor who was just like, hey, here's a guy who's got a charisma, but is saying crazy things that will, you know, push the American political system to its seams, let's give it a whirl. Yeah, and who is the one that is pushing that? Right. And then like I think like, a little vicular is backed by Peter Teele. Allegedly. They don't mean that literally. I mean, he was just dead. Which I think the theory with that is like, Peter Teele is like down with transhumanism. And it's cool. I mean, we talked about Peter Teele quite a bit on this very program. We did, we did, we did. And I think he's down with transhumanism. So he's like back in the enhanced games. He's just not down with trans humans, folks. (laughing) But he's like, you know, he's kind of like post, like post-humanity, post-sexual, which is where clovicular is perfect. Cause he's like, dude, you just have a smooth face and never fuck. It's like the idea of fucking. And enhance your body as much as possible using whatever it takes. Yeah. And then how long clovicular uses a microchip? And then it's like, oh nice. Okay, well, this is pretty easy. We can convince all these kids, like microchips are hot. Yeah, basically. And then the enhanced game is basically doing the same thing. Just getting the skies pointed out. But failed. Into a large degree. People, I mean, it was just like. He was. Yeah, what's up? He was. Yeah, I mean, I think that just in terms of intrigue, it was just like, there was a concept and then it didn't come to fruition. They didn't get the world records. The ones they did were a little sus. A bunch of clean athletes won. And also, I think with the enhanced games, I like the idea because I grew up steroid era Barry bonds. Greatest ever play baseball. Absolutely loved it. But we don't want to watch the people who aren't the best in the world on steroids. See what they can do. Like you want to see what happens when the best of the best are doing cool stuff. But like running and swimming aren't interesting to watch. The reason we watch the Olympics are because, A, they're the best and B, we care about our countries. Yeah. And they're watching someone who couldn't make the Olympics and is trying to drug their way back to the mean. And it's just kind of like, and they're just swimming in a fucking pool full of piss and vagus and stuff and whatever. It does have the, but it is kind of like indicative of just like VC, like art or like VC events. Yeah. This is the VC version of art. Yeah, where it's like all these VC companies being like, hey, we're not going to have a story. This like product that we're going to sell isn't going to be like a grandma. They tried to make it in a yard. Like that's what people wanted like 20 years ago. Now they're just like, hey, we put in all the money and we're going to make the best possible thing. And then we're going to just sell it for as much money as we can. Hey, what's depending on what the thing is? That's good. Well, yeah, but like a bowl shop that opens up down the street and they sell protein bowls. Right. Like there was a time where it was like, this started as my upwila. Yeah, that's done. And now it's like, no, we just found a way to give you the best food as cheap as possible and that and we're going to exit to something else. But I think that the human reaction to that is to go back to the other thing. Which is kind of funny because we, I mean, to an extent are getting good products from these VC companies. Yeah, but then everyone's like, don't give me slop and they're like, it's, I swear to God, it's the best. Like you're going to get at a mass scale. Yeah. But I think that there's, I mean, there's a place for both. Like maybe you eat your slop on a Tuesday at noon because you have 10 minutes on your lunch break at your VC. But you know, on the weekend, you kind of want to get your Anthony Bourdain on and like go to a place that means something and maybe they use a tortilla that has some friggin chemical in it. You don't like, we don't give a shit because they've been on the corner of that block for 100 years and you feel like you're connected to history and you're being a human. And that's the thing. And that's nice to do. You know, it makes you feel good. And then the VCs are like, we're realizing there's a competitive advantage to actually having a 300 year old restaurant held by an old Mexican lady. So we've mass produced Mexican ladies and we're putting them in every corner of America. And they're all 500 years old. - Yeah, they're all 500 years old. - We have the oldest abuela. We have the oldest abuela that actually has ever existed. - She invented the tortilla. - She invented the tortilla theoretically. - Yeah, I mean, that's basically what it's gonna take. But I think this is a bigger trend of just like kind of everything feeling fake. And one of the most recent things that everyone's kind of like glossed over was the recent assassination attempt on Trump in 2026 at the White House corresponds dinner. The aftermath is very strange. So if anyone who doesn't know, which I'm shocked, if you wouldn't, April 25th, 2026 at the Washington Hilton, 31 year old named Cole Allen, runs into the corresponds to the 12 gauge shotgun and tries to swiftly. - Yeah, he was hoping it. And it's a pack room. You got cabinet members, first lady, JD Vance, all these journalists. And he fires hits the secret service officer in the chest, the vest held. And then the officer returned fire. Allen goes down. The president of the first lady are evacuated. They survive. Allen is arrested with a shotgun, a pistol, a bunch of knives, and now facing life in prison. Now, he's a 31 year old Caltech educated engineer in part time tutor from Torrance, California. What do you know about Torrance, California? - Not a lot. It's outside of LA, I believe. Oh, damn, they got him in the blankie. - Why'd they put him like a big potato? - They got a lot of his head apart of it. - All right, we're gonna wrap this in his pubes. - What the hell is this? - He traveled by Amtrak from LA to Chicago to D.C. checking to the hopes of the day before and then emailed his family 10 minutes before saying cold, cold force, friendly assassin. And the weird part of this whole thing is that within hours of his name going public, people found a Twitter account from a Henry Ma 59561893. That was created on December 2023. Pepe the Frog is the profile. picture. And the banners from a site called Time Machine Europe. And not only that, but it is a pepe the frog in a tuxedo holding a wine glass, which some people feel is correspondancy. That's right. Yeah. And exactly one post with the name Cole Allen posted on December 22, 2023, 2.5 years before the attack and then nothing else. Now within days, it gets like 55 million views, like Rogan talks about his podcast and people are trying to understand what's happening. Like, how is this even possible? Like what does any of this mean? And then people found Cole Allen's LinkedIn listed as a 2014 intern at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Now the same year NASA published an Orion spacecraft paper co-authored by aerospace engineer Henry Martinez matching the same account name on that Twitter account. Now could be a coincidence. The NASA scientists Martinez and the NASA intern are both at JPL in the same year, Jet Propulsion Lab. And Martinez has this, this different Martinez or the same Martinez has a dormant account that says the name Cole Allen. Now why is this happening? Like, Snopes traced the Time Machine banner to an unsplashed stock photo circulating since 2021 from a psychedelics blog that used it and then in 2022. Now people on the internet say you can't backdate a post on X. So this, the time stamp of this seems to be accurate. And it's very strange. So is it possible? This was referencing a different tweet that's now deleted and then that one tweet just stays up there referencing a different Cole Allen. It's not the most unique name in the world. But it's just a strange ripple. And it's one of these things that I think also contributes to this feeling of like, is anything real? Like how does something happen? And then there's a corresponding thing. Is it just finding that also the possibility of, you know, it's like the, if you get a whatever it is, if you get a bunch of monkeys on a keyboard, eventually they'll type an entire work of Shakespeare. Right. Is that what it is? There's just a thing, enough stuff on the internet where people are like, I do think there is a little bit of that where like we are built to perceive patterns and we've never had as much easily searchable data before in our lives. So now we can just see a pattern wherever we want. Yeah. That's true. And there's actually a name for that that we're going to get to in a second. But it is just interesting to me that this stuff happens and everyone's just kind of like, all right. And no one really believes it. Yeah. Like that to me, the reaction is interesting. The assassination is every assassination with Trump. I mean, Butler doesn't even make sense. Like the more we dig into Butler, it's like, wait, what? Yeah. And that seems to be like the pivotal point in his election campaign where it's like, oh, this guy's going to win. And that one photo. Yeah. And the way that they lowered the flag for the camera guys and all that, it's very, very, very strange and all weird. And no one believes any. I also, the most compelling thing I saw about the whole Butler one was again, the details and nothing has really like come out. Although the guy who left the administration, Joe Kent, I know was basically saying he was not allowed to look into the Butler investigation further, which is interesting. And I saw some lady who was former MAGA on Twitter tweeting about it. And she was like, this made the most sense to me. She's like, is it odd to anyone else that the pettiest person of all time has never brought it up ever again? And the first thing he said at his RNC speech was, I'm going to tell you this story once and I will never tell it ever again. Yeah. And she was like, that is a telltale thing you do when you're trying to cover something up or lie because the hardest thing to do is keep a lie straight. So the idea that the pettiest person of all time who won't let go, like if someone pushed him in gym class like 50 years ago was like, but you can try to kill me and I will never really look into who actually did it or tweak out about it ever again. I mean, or even blame, or even blame the left for like, say that this guy was of the left and he was a lunatic. No, he's just let it go. That to me is the one thing that I'm like, that is the opposite of his behavior for his entire life and every other reason. He did blame Iran at one point. He did for a bit and then dropped and then bombed him. Yeah. But I'm like, how does Iran even get in touch with Matthew Crooks? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. What is the story with that? Like, how does that make sense? This one, there's a tweet that I kind of want to find about this last one and I don't mean to derail us, but it was real. One of the funniest tweets I've ever seen and it was just like an analysis of this guy. Yeah. It was Captain Crunch on Twitter. It's a video of him running through and he's just analyzing his attack plan. No smokes, no entry flash, no back-of-sight peak with AWP from tunnel. Just straight P90 rush. Be psychably at dick first at mock fuck. Basically, that was it, dude. Dick first at mock fuck and if we trust the official story, it came centimeters away from doing it. Yeah. Immediately, the texts went out because they have these like mega influencer group chats and immediately the text went out and told everybody, start talking about the ballroom. Talk about the ballroom. So you had a coordinated push from an entire side of the aisle that was like, let's use this to try and get a ballroom made because it's something the president cares the most about for some reason. Yeah. And then, well, that's apparently a data center and they're building all the surveillance stuff. Which we used to keep secret. Literally, there's like a clip of him and he is like, we're going to build all the secret military things right beneath. I'm like, don't say that. Stop, dude. Stop. He's like, we're going to do research. Aliens, Epstein's going to live down there. Aliens. Everyone's just going to live under the ballroom. Yeah. And it just kind of came out, like kind of said. Which again is another conspiracy. People are percolating. They're like, oh, there's something else with this ballroom. And then Trump just basically confirmed it. Yeah. Well, it's one of those things for like either everything is a grand conspiracy or we're letting a crazy 80-year-old run. Maybe it's bad. Yeah. Maybe. And it seems like most people within mag, or maybe not most, but many people within mag also don't really support this theory. So like Tucker Carlson suggested that the FBI lied about the shooters online footprint. Marjorie Taylor Green, until recently, one of Trump's most loyal allies posted multiple statements on ex-questioning the official story and accusing Trump of covering it up saying that the entire thing doesn't smep, doesn't pass the smell test. Candace Owens blamed Miriam Adelson, this, you know, Israeli-American billionaire and Republican donor of secretly orchestrating it. And so even people within like the coalition are now, or at least formerly within the coalition at one point, are now also being like, hey, this is all fougaisy. And this is how everyone views everything. There was, I mean, a week ago, there was another shooting at the White House. And I saw, I like opened up the thread, like as it happened. And I swear to God, it was alternating comments. Radical left lunatic, obviously. Every time Trump's poll number slips, he gets shot, clear conspiracy. This was definitely Israel. This was definitely Iran. Wink wink says Netanyahu. It was literally every single group blaming a different group and just saying this is for sure what it is. But notice no one blaming the person that is confirmed by the report had been the person that did it. It's too easy. Which is just that's the perfect crime. That's to me is like the underlying thing here that things happen the most documented assassination attempt in history undoubtedly. And most people don't believe it. I have a stat in here somewhere. I got to find it later. But like, I think it was something like 70 to 75% of people don't believe the official story of the either assassination attempt. Yeah. I think the court totally different reasons. Yeah. Yeah. And like some people blame the left and other people blame Iran and other people blame. Like no one thinks it was just this guy acting alone, which is what the official report found. Right. And people would say like, well, there's no way that this would happen. You know, I mean like like a false flag or somehow planting some type of fake thing to like change people's psychologies and like perpetuate this thing that's not real. But there is some evidence. 1962, a US joint chiefs of staff, the highest ranking military officials in the country drafted a top secret document called Operation Northwoods. They've heard of this. It was signed by the Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and it laid out in bureaucratic sort of legalese a series of proposed false flag terrorist attacks against American citizens to be blamed on Cuba in order to manufacture public support for invasion. Those proposals included sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, bombing American cities, shooting down a remote controlled plane to skies as a passenger plane staging a fake attack on Guantanamo Bay. President JFK rejected the plan and the document, documents specifically remained classified for 35 years until 1997 when it was then declassified. You can just feel how far the country has come where they thought that a false flag would be sinking a boat of Cuban refugees, whereas these days the administration would do it and be cheered on. It's a knife and a false flag. No, they've been blowing up boats. Yeah, they just did that. They just say fentanyl and then invade it in Venezuela. Yeah, kind of crazy. That's that is insane. And so and that's not the only time. So you have that and then you have Coentel Pro, FBI secret illegal program to surveil and discredit civil rights leaders exposed in 1971 when activists physically broken into the FBI office and stole the files. Right. And then you have that because that's where they got they caught Martin Slippin. Yeah, wait, Martin Martin Luther King. Oh, yeah. Didn't they like frame him or like, you know, monitor him texting a fucking side piece. All of them were modern. Like they all of them were modern. Like they attempted to discredit them, find anything on them. Yeah, to be like, oh yeah, these people are all unreliable. You can't trust them. These are bad moral actors like they're all mountain crazy. And the government was like actively trying to do that. And those days, I have a dream that one day my real bitch and my side. I will be kept separate and the government will stay out of it. Fuck. Let him cook. Right. He's a great man. Yeah, yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong. You can have a church piece in a state piece separation. Yeah church and Skeet Yeah church and street. Yeah That's way church and street separation of church and street hundred percent back in the day Everyone was doing it back then Kennedy was doing it. Yeah, I'm like it was just him. Get the fuck out of here Yeah, oh yeah, 41% of Americans that heard the theory that Democrats orchestrated the shooting 53% have heard the theory that Republican stages themselves and Between like 30 to 40% thought that one of the other was plausible So more than a quarter of the country on either side is now operating from a based on assumption that these assassination attempts were faked Which is how you know dead internet theory is one because we've been pushed so far and radicalized so far that before There's no amount of information that will change a lot of people's minds right including me sometimes Yeah, I mean, even that one. I'm like, I don't know what happened, but it seems weird. Yeah, I mean to invoke hitches You can't reason someone out of a position. They didn't reason into whoo, you know So if you just hear something you're like, oh, that feels right to me Yeah, the amount of data is gonna make him be like no actually I changed my mind Yeah, you're just gonna stick with the thing that feels right. Yeah Hey guys, we're gonna take a break really quick because I want to talk to you about GLD This is an awesome new company that we're working with that I'm actually wearing right now I actually got this crucifix right here and honestly Even just getting it you know sometimes like when you work with some companies You're like all right. I really hope the product is good. This one is I I wear it all the time Does actually like the new crucifix? I lost my last one at a bathhouse littered at a sauna I lost my crucifix which is maybe God's way of telling me something But I got a new one from GLD and I've been rocking it non-stop my wife likes it And it's got like a nice weight to it the details actually look better in person the clasp is like super solid It doesn't feel like something you bought like in time square from a random dude It doesn't feel like something you order from you know some sketchy website on Tmu And they got everything chains pen and spray slits watches whether you want something subtle or some of that's like Yeah, I just I just signed a deal You know I mean if you want like the record deal chain they got that too now if I haven't convinced you yet Let me sweeten the deal a little bit all right for a limited time the listeners of this program camp Gagnon for legit camp history camp in the entire camp universe. You're getting a crazy deal If you use the code camp C-A-M-P when you check out you're going to get 40% off your entire order at gld.com That's 40% off your whole order with the code camp at checkout at gld.com And after you purchase they're going to ask where you heard about gld telling me heard about them from you know The good folks here at the campsite mark and cresto sent you and whenever you do that it really helps You know support the show and Thank you so much to gld and thank you to you for tuning in let's get back to the show Now there's another case that happened that is maybe the craziest ripple on this whole thing in my opinion But it didn't happen in america so not really Know about it happen in Slovakia and It's pretty wild. There's a journalist named monica to dova to dova's reporter at an independence Slovak newspaper named denic N and she's well known in her country and according to research from the investigative center of Yan kushyak she was the single most attacked journalist in Slovakia in the months leading up to the September 2023 parliamentary election smear campaigns hate speech surveillance all that stuff and then two days before the election They have something in Slovakia where you have like a silence period where you can't publish or like release articles relating to the election for two days to like create silence Someone releases an audio file and in it to dova could be heard having a phone call with a politician named mccahl Sima checa Sima checa The head of the liberal progressive Slovakia party and they were discussing how the two of them could work together to Rig the election and they were like look. We're gonna buy votes from the Roma. We're gonna manipulate ballots And the crazier bar was gonna ask for a photo of her The whole time I was like she a piece and server says she's a piece of corruption Well, that's what's crazy about this is that the conversation that leaked never happened Oh, it was an AI generated deep fake and the audio was fully synthetic But it was good enough and the timing two days before the vote fell with in Slovakia's mandated election coverage Silence period meaning that the press was legally prohibited from debunking it before the voters went to the poll Because I literally was like that sounds like such a good idea and then I was like, but it's also such a downside There's so much green field to just drop a fucking bomb. There you go tens of thousands of people heard it before any correction could be issued and then Semienka's party lost and they lost to a more pro-Russian candidate Named Robert Fiko who had been trailing the polls before this deep set deep fake surfaced Now I can only wonder if you're going to bring this back to AI in a very recent American election ad Or do you want me to do it like you do it? Okay, did you hear much about the Kentucky race with Thomas Massey Yeah, I mean Trump wanted out So Massey was going with really packed in a files And they actually it became the most I believe the most expensive Congressional election American history because a pack spent a ton of money and one of the key ads in it Was an ad that used AI that Was saying Thomas Massey was in a thruple with the squad and so it showed him Like checking into a hotel with Ilhan Omar and AOC and it like if you're a mildly intelligent person You're kind of like they're doing a metaphor or something wow, but the main people who broke for the Candidate Trump installed based on who's no one's ever heard of Um A lot of them were like yeah, well, I liked Massey, but you know He had that thing with those two women because of like 70-year-old people in Kentucky whose brains don't know how to process AI And they just fucking fizzle out and wow now let the right show. It's not just Kentucky that would fall for this Like this probably this would probably work in any state in America. Oh totally and by evidence of this I mean it worked in Slovakia and those people are smart. Yeah, and it's just like all like AI is tough for everybody But for old people. It's like truly unfair. Oh, yeah, I mean I have Some folks I'm using a bazooka on a baby What literally what do you mean that that polar bear didn't save that penguin? Yeah And then I've seen old dudes at coffee shops just listening to AI videos out loud being like no way And I can it's you can obviously hear it say I if you have any like literacy with the stuff, but like be it out Yeah for him is like yeah, I'm gonna be weirder shit when we're old We're gonna be cook film in a new and weird unfathomable ways. I mean, we're already almost cooked There's a study that was done that shows how frequently people can detect AI voices and AI videos and uh, oh It's the results will shock you It's I think that the most helpful thing to do is like when something seems ridiculous Anything seems ridiculous just be like if that doesn't feel real it might not be. Yeah Now the question is who released this audio footage like that's completely anonymous So like the audio file to like frame this person and the journalist and basically get them out of there NATO strategic communication center of excellence later noted that just over an hour before the deep fake went viral Russia's foreign intelligence service issued a press release naming Semenca by name and accusing the US of trying to Influence Lavaque's election. We did it. That's what that's what Russia says Oh, that is what Russia would say. I always say it's them too and every interview that Tadova gave afterwards She had to start with the same explanation. This conversation is not real. That's not my voice It is purely a fabrication and no matter how many times she said it There was a percentage of the population that heard the audio and then the correction second and the audio was what stuck Wow now there's one that happened This isn't like a race in Alabama's Roy what's that guy Roy something? Oh, yeah, I forgot about him That was I phrased his name he had all sorts of crazy. Yeah, but he This specific case was interesting because it's not the exact same thing, but it's similar enough It was documented in the great hack on Netflix where also the name of your new special It was not my new special Joey Avery live in San Francisco. It's out on YouTube right now. Let's get it over a hundred K Oh, yeah, Roy Moore, so yes, so basically there is this big election, right? I think it was this one in 2017 and there's a guy who Went and you bought Facebook ads and the Facebook ads he was basically saying like vote for Roy Moore Because he's gonna make alcohol illegal in Alabama Roy Moe's Roy Moore is obviously like Republican Christian more conservative and they're like he's going to ban alcohol And then all like the moderate right-leaning people were like hey, maybe We shouldn't vote for this guy because like we don't love Doug Jones the Democrat. Yeah, damn Democrat But he's gonna leave this list of alcohol and so by using a fake thing they were able to fake positive ad is the best They were able to push people to the left info for Doug Jones Wow and based off the data that they published in the great hack It was like he reached like Something like 30 million Now it's probably closer like three million or some shit. I think it was like three million people And like if you could just influence one of them this race was so close that like that 1% that might have been influenced by that Facebook ad would have been enough to flip the election It's a race to the bottom crazy, right? Now the uh what's wild is that you have the correction that comes after but at that point it's too late and That's just what it is and It's interesting because like there's just this sort of like energy of I don't know like skepticism unbelief of anything on the internet at least that's how I just don't believe anything Like I see stuff and I'm like I'll engage with it and I kind of like try to understand it but like I don't I just can't believe anything Yeah, like somewhat like my mom will send me like my dad will be like you see what mom Donnie did and I'm like Whatever you are sending me. I'm just not not going to believe off-ripp until I really like dig into it. - And even like at a much lower stakes level, like my wife will show me like these people who do couples content and I'm like, this is all staged. - Yeah. - Like it'll be like, oh look, I'm gonna do this to my husband. He's like, ooh, what are you doing back there? - Yeah, and I'm like, this is, he's a bad actor. - Yeah, yeah. - And then she's like, I'm gonna make a show if anything you want. I'm like, I'm sorry. - Well that was a Facebook the most. Like you'll see like an eight minute Facebook video of like me pranking my wife and it's like seven minutes of him setting up this prank. - Yeah. - And then the wife is like, and it's that. And then there's the rage bait of like the health shit. She started watching this lady called mother on TikTok. And she's just this crazy lady and she just throws all these like things into a bowl and she doesn't cut anything. So she'll just throw like an entire gourd into a bowl with all these spices and it masquerades. It's like, this is how you be healthy. And it's like, none of this is useful at all. It's just built to shock you. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh my god, I've never seen this before. And then you watch 10 videos in your head. You're like, why have I been cutting my squashes? When I could just put them in here with a bunch of seasoning and turmeric and like, and it's all bullshit. - Yeah, and that's, I don't know, that's the part that like and it's terrible once you have a kid. I mean, the amount of content my wife gets where it's just like, because like here's how you should be a mother. - Yeah, and I told my wife something that I actually think is helpful advice because I'll shut the fuck up. (laughing) - No, I said, if you were just kidding, we love you ladies. - If anything scares you on the internet. - See if they're selling something. - Yeah. - And if they're selling something you don't have to listen to it. - Yeah. - Because there's so many times where it's like, if you're wearing these shoes, your child will have hip dysplasia. And then it'll show like a video of a kid like In-Fuck in Fallujah with his legs blown off. And they're like, this is my kid because I wore these wrong shoes. And then you scroll enough through the carousel and it's like, by these shoes with my promo code. And I'm like, anything they're selling and it's built to pray off your emotions and one of the emotions is, especially as a parent, I'm not being perfect. What am I fucking up? Like I wanna be good at this. And health is the same way. What am I doing wrong? How do I do this? And like the actual advice is so simple, but simple doesn't sell. I can't sell you blueberries and tell you they're good for antioxidants. I don't have a code for blueberries. But if it's a pill that you shove up your ass, it only I make. (laughing) Have you checked it on liver king recently, by the way? - No, how's he doing? - Oh my God, so bad. He's doing the worst of anyone I've ever seen doing. - Can we check it out? - It's so bad. He is, he is injured. I think like a drug induced psychosis of some kind, some kind, as his engagement falls off, he just gets weirder and weirder. - Like his Instagram? - Yeah, his Instagram. His son is dropping a rap track now that's bizarre. - Yeah, click that one. - Not that one. - I literally looked at his page yesterday 'cause I was like, what's happening? Go to his page, I will show you. - If you click on that, I'll take your name. - Yeah, go to his Instagram and I'll give you a good, 'cause that's a collab post with his son. It's not as interesting as you think. Yeah, 'cause that's old liver king. What we need is modern day liver king. Scroll down a little bit. Yeah, actually go to that one with, that one with 1.2 million there. - Right, this will be a good one. - This will be a good one. 'Cause that's the best engagement he's got in a while. But here's what he's up to. - Okay, he's walking through a club. - I think it's early morning, so if you guys want to face something, get to bed, you can get zinkered. Go round into your primal sense. The way it's doing, it applies to party and you can hate. You can hate me, fine. Because I'm having fun and I'm inviting you to the same party. I think here's what's most important, here's the message that this has happened. Someone who's like, "How's it going?" "Oh, don't make me do that stupid." You don't really have to ask him a question. And so, okay, here it goes. I'm having a record, but I actually just say, "I'm having a record here." I'm having, that's true, right? Yeah. - This makes me sad. - Time. - Ask questions that matter, if you don't want to honor your own time, you think about honoring the other person. And then, what kind of year are you gonna have? Can you call your shot? - All right, all right. - Yeah, so the problem is like, he needs an intervention and the people in his life are not capable of like, they're still somehow drafting off whatever clout remains. And it's like, dude, this guy needs to go to like a facility. He was trying to fight Joe Rogan. - Yeah, I remember this, he went down to Austin. I just, it makes me sad because like, he's got kids and I'm like, oh man. And it's like, he's too much of a cash cow and like too much of a celeb for people like, pull off of it. But it's like, you gotta, we gotta let go of liver king. And you gotta be brining one. - Yeah, I was gonna say, society has let go, but he cannot. - Yeah. - He cannot, I mean, it's, maybe this is a side of them. Maybe he got him killed, or did he, did he might have? - Maybe they tried to get him. - The pharma was like, liver's too healthy as I'm saying, dude. - Do you deliver in bone marrow? It's weird 'cause it started off like kind of reasonable and then it just got fucking insane. - It was super based for the first year. He was lying. - He was lying about her. - But he was like, dude, eat liver and you'll look good. And that's not the worst advice. It's probably a ham fisted, but maybe true. - This is what I tried to explain to people who are like, new into the health space is like, the supplements did not make the person jacked. They found someone who was jacked that you would buy supplements from. - I mean, Nathan Field had proved this pretty exquisitely in Nathan for you. - Did he? - I don't know if he saw this. - He's the best. - So he tries to help a moving company. And he goes, hey, the guys that move these boxes, they're probably getting a good workout. So why don't you market moving boxes as a health train? And then people are now paying you to move boxes. And then now you're double dipping. So you're getting the boxes moved for the people who are paying you. And then you're getting other people to pay to do it. And so now it's like, it's a great thing. And he found a guy that was roided up at a bodybuilding convention, be like, you're gonna be the face of this. - Yeah. - And then he got him on like, good morning, American. Like all these like local news channels to like promote like moving boxes. And he's like, yeah, I got this physique from moving boxes. And it's obviously absurd because you're seeing it from our side. But if you're just watching the morning news and this guy's like, yeah, I got jacked moving boxes, you'd be like, maybe. - And in your mind, you're like, I mean, it's a natural thing. We've always done it. It's full body workout, it's legs, it's upper, it's a little anaerobic. Like, and you just, you're just, we're so dumb. - Yeah. - And that's what's unfixable is we're so dumb. And it's really that we're not meant to be exposed to all of this. - Yeah. - So we've set up systems to trick our primitive minds. We literally should just be hitting each other in the head with sticks or hammers in our chins. - Yes, it's fucking bone smashing. - So I guess the question we need to land on is would do people believe everything or do people believe nothing? I can't really tell. - Depends on the person. - Well, of 2025 poll from Change Research says, they asked people about a bunch of different conspiracy theories, like a massive sample. And they were like, which of these do you believe? 83% said that US leaders' excuse human rights abuse is abroad to protect political and business interests. - All right, yeah. 82% said the CIA had assassinated foreign leaders. Probably definitely true. 75% Jeffrey Epstein said Jeffrey Epstein was murdered to protect powerful people, tracks. 74% said the mainstream media takes orders from elites on what to cover, probably. 60% said the CIA has assassinated American political figures. - Yeah, yeah. - Now you take those numbers and like all the lowest number was 60%. - Yeah. - And it's like, okay, well MLK was obviously killed by us. Yeah, right, JFK was most certainly. I mean, RFK too, yeah. - Probably. - Now you're looking at this and you're like, this is not a fringe number. These are super majorities, right? Like most people don't believe, like, and again, the official story on all these things is the opposite. - Let's just say we don't actually have proof for a smoking gun for any of them, right? - No, I mean, circumstances like. - Circumstantially you could look at JFK and be like, well, it wasn't the Harvey Oswald. Who did it? Who knows, but probably right. But that guy, that's a connect to the CIA that's living in Russia, I don't know. Now, it's one of these things where you look at it and you're like, yeah, sorry, this is an aside. But I wanted to learn more about the JFK assassination 'cause I'd heard that the story is not legit. - Yeah, it's crazy. I went and I was like in a bookstore and I saw a book about it and so I bought it. And I was like living in South Africa at the time, I like bring it to the beach and I'm like, I'm gonna get read in on this. And the book that I bought was like literally like the, like, like, Harden Commission, like government report that no one trusts. - The war commission. - But the war commission. So I just have this like, this like hard back version of the Warren Commission report that no one believes. I'm reading it on a beach in Africa. Like, I'm gonna be looking, learning so much shit. And then I get like halfway through and everyone's like, yeah, that's bullshit. I'm like, oh my god. - Yeah, you can do being performative, right? (laughing) - Well, I have a couple podcasts I can send you on this topic. - Please. - But are you? - Yes, exactly. - And. - Why JFK was killed by the first gay. - It was Nazi. (laughing) - I mean, it is absurd. If you were to read the Warren Commission, you'd be like, okay, so one bullet came out of this gun, like 300 feet away, went through JFK's head and then into his chest and then into connolly shoulder into his arm and then into his thigh and then was put on his stretcher when he was getting put in the hospital. - I think there was an extra bullet in RFK, too. Dude, the Kennedy's maybe just, maybe they should make bullets. - Yeah. - Maybe they. (laughing) - I mean, yeah, they should get in the biz. I mean, at least profit off of the magic bullets. - But it's just crazy that most people don't believe in this shit. Like, they don't believe in anything. - Yeah. - And I think it's probably it's possible that it's just too hard to process things. There's just so much out there that it's to dig into JFK thing. You had to buy a Fugaisie book and sell that. - Right, and so that took time and effort. - And it's also the stakes of if you've ever worked at a company and you understand how people at a higher up deal with an issue that reflects poorly on them, it's the immediate thing isn't like, "Guess we gotta tell everyone." - It's like how do we do the least amount of damage to our overall organization and narrative, and we do it by covering shit up. - Yeah, and so it's like-- - This is human nature. - I've just been the case forever. I mean, like conspiracy has been like a deep-seated and like the human psyche, all the way to, you know, a foreseaser. - You got a name, right? - But it's now just everything's available. - Yeah, did like Native Americans have conspiracies? - Yeah, they thought the mountains talked to him. (laughing) - It's an interesting theory. I mean, maybe, maybe animism has strong roots. I don't know, I've never heard of mountain. I've listened to the rock. - Could just be you. - Yeah, yeah. - Buy to cure. Buy my Taramana. - Now in 2018, two law professors named Robert Chesney and Danielle Sutrum published a paper in the California Law Review that introduced a concept called the Liars Dividend. Now the thesis, once the public knows that videos can be faked, audio can be cloned and images can be generated. One deep fakes are real and known to be real. Anyone caught on camera doing anything that they don't want to be doing can simply claim that the record is fake. Now the burden of truth or the burden of proof rather is inverted. Instead of needing to prove that something is true, the public has to prove it's not fabricated. And so the people who benefit the most from this are the ones that have the most to hide. - All right. - Because there's a clip of you saying that word. - Obviously, we've all seen it. - That's not true at all. - And that's exactly what we would say, and you say it's a deep fake. - Right. (laughing) It's crazy, right? Like anyone that has any type of slip up, like Morgan Wallens and one of the debacle. Like if that happened today, he'd just be like, "Can't it's not true?" - And it probably would be believed, at least by the people that need to believe in the most, which are hard fans. - Yeah. - That we're kind of a bit blunt to it anyway. But if you could just be like, "Yeah, this is a deep fake, doesn't matter." - Yeah. - Crazy. - And that's only gonna happen more and more. So UNESCO and late 2025 described humanity as approaching the point they call a synthetic reality threshold, a point where humans can no longer distinguish authentic from fabricated media without technological assistance. So Stanford study found that human beings can correctly identify high quality AI-generated voice clones 24% of the time. - Worse than a coin flip. - And that's now. - Yeah. So when something happens like a shooting or a death or a viral tweet, what's up, my end words? (laughing) - Hello. - Oh, that's good. - Thank you. - Oh. - This is how Stephen Hawking talks. (laughing) - I learned that from Casey Rogget. - Oh yeah, you just suck it in. - Yeah. - Whoa. - That's not how I learned it. - Yeah. (laughing) - He just taught me. - Yeah, he just told me how to do it. - Yeah, he just breathed in while you do it. - Hello, my name is Stephen Hawking. - That's good. - I want to have some stung children. - Okay. - That's what Stephen Hawking said. - Flip that. Flip that, please. - You can't post it directly on my page. - They are. - Former host of camp, no one says this. - No, we take it over. - We said we can't increase it. - Yeah. (laughing) - Now, you know, this guy, Joseph Bodnar, that I mentioned before, is an analyst at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, described the foreign interference strategy in one sentence. This is the thing I talked about before. They're picking up these domestic actors and then amplifying them. And so, you have an information environment that's mostly not human. The institutions have a documented history of lying northwards, go and tell pro. The technology to fabricate anything now exists and is relatively cheap. And the foreign actors who want to accelerate your distrust don't need to create content anymore. They can just find what you already believe and then amplify the voices around them. And each one of those things is now compounding on top of each other. - While the algorithms on top of that, you know, push that stuff harder and harder because it helps keep people engaged. - Yeah. - It's a convergence of all the worst traits of human nature. - Yeah. - All for money. - Yep. - And power, also. Now, there is a desire for human beings to find three lines. This is the thing that you talked about before. Apaphenia. And this is the human tendency to find meaningful patterns in random data. Now, this is where it's interesting because like you see like a face in the clouds and you're like, oh, that's a face. Like you're finding connections with things that don't have any relative connection. And that's how a lot of people will discredit because they're just like, oh yeah, this is just, you know, a connection. - Apaphenia. - Apaphenia. You're just finding an element. - You want to trot that word out a lot though 'cause I feel like people don't know that and if you throw that, I'm not going to be like, you're smart. - Apaphenia. - Yeah, you might just be engaging in apaphenia if you would be what? Well, you know, as a human being, you're going to probably perceive meaningful patterns. - Exactly. - And this data. - Now, the opposite of apaphenia is also a failure mechanism. Like if you're not noticing any patterns, that's also a real quick way to go extinct. - Right. - So the opposite of seeing patterns is, you know, missing patterns when they're real. So like refusing to acknowledge Operation Northwoods is like a real document. That was at least thrown out, allegedly. Refusing to see like MKL to really existed, Tuskegee Medical Experiments actually existed. That like deep fakes can like swing elections in Slovakia and like not think that that could happen here. So like there has to be a certain level where it's like, okay, we'll do just fine patterns. Everything or should you just reject every pattern because you don't want to be apaphenic? - Right. - And it's like, all right, well, what do you do? So, and if you reject every pattern, the outgrowth is just like always supporting the status quo and there's safety in that because your hope is like, oh, people are trying their best and, you know, the world's a mess and. - Yeah. - Now, how do we deal with this? - You think we blow it all up? (laughing) - Nuke ourselves. - I mean, you had a good theory of just kind of going and you know, touching grass. - Yeah, I think, I don't know if it fixes the problem, but I think in terms of you have to clean up your side of the street first and in your own life, if you just spend your whole time getting wound up about the fake things in the fake world, then you will go crazy. - Yes. - And so you need to go charge in reality. - Yes. I think that is, yeah, I think that is completely true. - Yeah, but you still should be engaged with what's going on so that you can understand things because the stuff is affecting our elections. - Yeah, I mean, also it's just affecting like your ability to offer to him being like existing within these destabilizing environments for hours on end, which most people are probably spending like upwards of five or six hours on the low end. Some up to like 15, 18 hours in this digital environment that is extremely toxic and destabilizing. - Yeah, if you're spending 15, 18 hours at once online, I have one prescription for you. You need to go have sex with a real human being, a real human and maybe I'm not good at that. - Exactly. That's the problem. - Yeah. - Spend all your time trying to do that. - Becoming hot. - That might start at the gym. - Yes. - That could start at the gym. - Yes. - That could start with a, you know. - Bone hammer to the face. - A hundred percent, a bone hammer to the face, but you can't just be online that much. It'd expect to be normal. - Yes. - Now, there are a couple of little tools that I think people can use that I try to use. And the first is trying to draw distinctions between skepticism and cynicism. So skepticism would be like, "Hey, what is the evidence for the claim?" And being willing to sort of update your beliefs based on that. Cynicism is the practice of assuming that everything is a lie. And I think that skepticism is the tool cynicism is like the posture. - Yeah. - Skepsism can be really helpful. It kind of keeps you tethered to reality. Whereas cynicism just kind of makes you I think angry and bitter and like completely distrusting of anything around you. - Yeah. And that doesn't work. - No. The second is probabilistic thinking. You don't have to decide if something is true or not true in the moment, the second you see it. But just ascribing probabilities to it. So like, you can be like, "All right, this is 70% likely." This is 30% likely. You can be like, "I don't know." And just find more information. You don't have to immediately jump to a conclusion on every piece of data that you come across. - Yeah. - Which a lot of people aren't comfortable with. - I, for whatever reason, kind of okay with it. - Just saying like, "Yeah, that might be true." - Literally like, "Is God real?" I'm like, "For me, 95%?" - Yeah. - Well, that's a pretty hefty fucking. That's how I feel, 95%. And I don't need to justify. I just go 95%. Do people within your faith take umberage with the 5% because faith is like the number one thing? - No. (laughing) - I'm just like, "That's how I feel." - Yeah. - Now like, in descending order, it's like, okay, well, like, is Christ the Lord? I'm like, we've got like 93%. Like, is the Catholic church the best way to interface with them? Like, well, it's got like 85%. - Okay. - That's how I feel. - Yeah. - And for other people, those percentages might be different. But like, that's how I deal with all media. We're like, "I'll see someone." It's like, "Mom, Donnie." I'm like, "All right, let's just put a percentage to this." - Yeah. - I don't have to give it to this binary. - Yeah. And also doing follow up research and checking multiple sources. And as much as people want to be like, "Did you see media like journalistic places?" If you see something that you're skeptical of, but a place with journalistic standards has confirmed it, you're on pretty good firming. - Yeah. - Footing. - I think so. And that is the third point in layering. - Yeah. - Trying to find, not just one outlet, but multiple different outlets too, then aggregate information. - And make sure it's not just an outlet that is AI. - Yeah. - Every time I search something, like the Hindustan Times pops up and it's just like respitting back at me the thing that I searched, and I'm like, "Did you just write this article?" What the fuck is this? I'm like, score of Giants game and it's like, "The Giants always play." (laughing) What is happening? - But yeah, I think those are like, maybe the three best things. And then I think the fourth thing is, I would include what you said, which is just like, Deal with what you can control. Yeah. That's what I try to do. Keep it in its box You're you're going to feel weird about things because you're exposed to things that you were never supposed to see Yeah, and you do have to take an active Stewardship in your own mental health. Yeah, and it requires logging off sometimes Yeah, and for some people it's hard because it's like how my whole job I'd work and so if I mean it better Both of us. Yeah, and it is hard and you go through phases where you're better and worse Like sometimes I'll be like looking at you know, I'm like getting bad I go to set my alarm and then I'm like scrolling and I've just scrolled pre-bed not good Other times it's like I'm reading a book every night. Yeah, and that's better Yeah, and you're like, yeah, Lee Harvey Oswald did kill this guy 100% Yeah, they did act alone The Warren Commission is actually one of the best commissions that was ever commissioned Yeah, and that was it led by Alan Dolas who was humiliated by JFK and ousted out of the CIA. Yeah, it's highly possible That is true, but that doesn't matter. We all have our spots Yeah, you know, no one's perfect. No, and I I just want to say that I believe the Warren Commission and I believe Alan Dolas Yeah, and I believe in his airport and I do yeah, it is crazy that we have JFK airport and then we also have Dolas Airport. Yeah, the guy that was killed and the guy that killed him. That's a pretty History is awesome. Yeah, isn't it? It is. It sure is. It's a fucking mess, but is any place not I mean, I guess we're more ironic about it like there are many Kennedys have died in playing crashes and then we named the airport JFK. Yeah. Yeah, well, it's better than naming the lake This makes me a little uncomfortable. Yeah, you don't want to fly into JFK. Yeah, yeah, because something already flew into JFK So it just feels like insult to injury Just taking off from a grassy noll. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exact and it's the worst airport ever you get halfway through that thing I am not yeah, I'm a bit I am a Liguardia if possible Newark if I must now who's Liguardia of K almost never who do you think that was? But why do I bet he was a mayor of New York? I believe he was a relatively popular mayor of New York if I'm not mistaken Do you think you did anything terrible? Well, yeah, probably but I don't know Fiorrello de Liguardia. See no, I'm gonna say no look at that fucking fat at beautiful Italian. All right scroll down to the wiki Look at those jowls full of Neo. Yeah, pop in there real quick pop into that wiki Yeah, let's just let's just see all right So on the left here. This is how you do wiki by the way scroll all the way to left And you see if there's anything immediately crazy because this is where it's gonna be like early life political career scandal Yeah, but no nothing there. That's pretty good political career mayor of New York Irassable energy at diminutive rotund stature is great Dude that would be so tough to just have in your in your wiki. Yeah, go to personal life because that's to me is the thing That that's really where the tales is told He's five foot zero five nothing my god short king. Okay, New York Times. Give him five two He's a good Catholic man and Yeah, he got married his wife passed away. You got another wife wife, dude, I love Nazi detention of sister. All right, hold on hold up wait scroll down a little bit Liguardia's sister Gemma Liguardia. Gluck married her man, Gluck They were living in Hungary and they were arrested by the Gestapo Adolf Eichmann and Hunter Kimler New that Gemma was Liguardia's sister in order that she be held as a political prisoner. Whoa, dear What a crazy life this guy had he had a crazy life you go through TSA and you're like, oh man. Could this get any worse? Think about Liguardia. I will be Think about Liguardia because I'll be right there at Liguardia Yeah, and you're gonna be like, you know what it could be worse. I mean, my sister could get the last name Gluck I mean, I think he seems like he was a good dude. Yeah, it seems like he was pretty solid Yeah, he was a the go go up to the very top because I thought it said something about the like a Panel of 69 scholars in 1993 ranked him as the best big city mayor in American history. What a friggin guy? I just did the last names of these scholars 69 I need to see the last names if it's a lot of two cheese and no cheese and guanit halos. I'm gonna be like a couple of blucks All right, well, I think he was a great mayor and let's have nice things, you know, I think in terms of pattern recognition I think that there is a in assumption that everyone who is successful that everyone who is in power has Horrible dark secrets because we hear about them so much and it is important to note that a lot of people just were good Yeah, and but you don't hear those stories. No, so we'll tell one we'll find our way We'll find our way and I was human beings. I actually trust the the will of the spirit to find the truth And I think we'll be fine. We'll be fine But it is funny also watch out for your parents too with the AI stuff. That's the that's the other thing I have a good pal whose dad my dad saw AI coming and just died It's like I can't it's like I'm out, but I will let you upload my consciousness. Yeah You could make an AI for dad that'd be awesome. Why is my AI drinking? Alcoholics intelligence. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. No, I had a friend of mine whose dad was trolling and he was like sky boxing from behind the couch And if he's trolling and it's just like right after Rob Reiner is killed by his own son Jesus, it says looks like Rob Reiner might have deserved it And then it's a tweet from Rob Reiner that says wow, they missed Trump next time. I hope they get him and then his dad sees it Like so keep scrolling and then my friends didn't they're being like my He knows that that's fake right and he Googles real quick like did Rob Reiner say that about Trump right never happened And then he had to pull his data side and be like hey dad. You know that that's not that's not true And he's like what he's like just scroll up real quick and he's like that Rob Reiner never said that and his dad was like Well, I still like it and then just kept scrolling and that was that's the problem That is the problem is like something will be fake and people will be like yeah, but is it though? Yeah, it feels right and it's like you're justifying it dude who's brutally murdered by his own mentally ill son. Yeah Yeah, because Because of some I mean that's now that's mental illness. Yeah Now if people are arguing with you in the comments, they're probably not real if they're hating on me in the comments They're definitely not real. Yeah almost certainly any of my ops are bots 100% yeah If you're getting fed content and make you feel angry. There's probably a reason for it So be on a lookout and Ultimately go outside and love your family And right before you do watch my special Joey every live in San Francisco check me out all over the web Post tons of great clips. I'm on tour Joey every calm and I have a podcast called the Joey show Unfortunately, that's true. Joey is a fantastic standard comedian. You should go check him out. Anyway Christos David. Thanks for tuning in appreciate y'all god bless you Thank you so much for tuning into camp if you're interested in content like this We'll make sure you subscribe if you like historical content great news We have a whole history camp where we talk about everything that's ever happened And if you want to know what's gonna happen next you can check a religion camp And that's the story of everything that's ever happened spiritually and ultimately why we're here why what we're doing Where we came from and where we're gonna go anyway? God bless you all. Thank you so much Peace Hey guys if you love conspiracies and hypothetical history Well, I want to invite you to check out signal 33 This is a companion pod to our podcast here at camp It's made and edited by the same team that runs all of our shows and I choose the topics every single week So check it out subscribe and start the dialogue in the comment section

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Over 50% of online traffic is now bot-generated, with the Imperva Bad Bot Report showing bots outnumbering humans by 51% in 2025.
  2. A significant portion of internet content—up to 90% by 2026—is synthetic, created by AI or AI-assisted tools, undermining authenticity.
  3. Deepfakes and AI-generated audio, such as the fabricated call between Slovak journalist Monica Tóth and politician Sima Šemínek, demonstrate how false narratives can manipulate elections.
  4. Bots and AI are strategically used to spread rage-based content, with "rage bait" tripling in usage and proven to increase post virality by 20%.
  5. Major political events, like the 2026 Trump assassination attempt and the Slovak election, have been shadowed by theories of false flags, with over 70% of Americans doubting the official accounts.
  6. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have admitted to removing millions of fake accounts for impersonation and coordinated spam, yet bots continue to influence discourse.
  7. The internet’s current state reflects a "dead internet theory" where most content is manufactured, leading to widespread distrust and a fractured perception of reality.
  8. Studies show that emotionally charged content spreads faster, and algorithms reward outrage, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of polarization and misinformation.

Summary:

The internet is increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence and bots, with over 50% of online traffic now generated by automated systems. Data from the Imperva Bad Bot Report and other studies reveal that bots outnumber humans, and by 2026, up to 90% of online content may be synthetic. This technological shift has intensified misinformation, with deepfakes—like the AI-generated audio of Slovak journalist Monica Tóth—being used to manipulate public opinion and swing elections.

Trends show that emotionally charged content, especially rage-based "rage bait," spreads faster and is algorithmically rewarded, leading to radicalization and polarization. Political events, such as the 2026 assassination attempt on Trump and the false-flag campaign in Slovakia, have been met with widespread skepticism, with 70–75% of Americans questioning official narratives. The phenomenon is further fueled by coordinated bot campaigns, AI-driven disinformation, and the deliberate use of fake content to provoke outrage.

As social media platforms acknowledge mass bot activity, the public’s trust in online information erodes. The result is a chaotic digital landscape where reality is increasingly perceived as fabricated, and users struggle to distinguish between authentic and synthetic content—highlighting a crisis of trust in both technology and shared truth.

FAQs

The dead internet theory claims that the internet died around 2016–2017 and is now dominated by bots and AI-generated content. Evidence includes the Imperva Bad Bot Report (2025) showing 51% of internet traffic comes from bots, and studies indicating over 35% of new websites are AI-generated or AI-assisted.

Bots are used to amplify rage-based content, manipulate public opinion, and create fake consensus. Studies show that emotionally charged content spreads faster, and bots can drive outrage, radicalize moderates, and influence election results through coordinated disinformation.

A Twitter account named 'Henry Ma' was found to have posted about Cole Allen—2.5 years before the attack—using a profile with Pepe the Frog and a Time Machine Europe banner. This raises suspicion, as the account and content appear to predate the event, suggesting possible bot involvement or deepfake manipulation.

No, the audio was an AI-generated deepfake. The conversation was fabricated and released just before the election, leading to a significant political backlash, despite the fact that it was later proven to be synthetic.

AI-generated content and deepfakes create a sense of reality that is misleading and fake. People often believe content that feels authentic, even when it's fabricated, especially when it's emotionally charged or tied to political events, undermining trust in facts and official narratives.

Platforms like Facebook and Twitter use algorithms that reward outrage and emotional content. Bots flood comment sections with fake or coordinated content, and platforms have removed millions of fake accounts, yet the systems continue to amplify disinformation and false narratives.

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