The truth in front of us
does not match the truth out there.
As a cop out, we turn the truth over to the mob,
instead of deeply inquiring and discovering.
Nuance is lost
when we receive this type of information.
We are memetically spectating at a rate
never before possible.
New cultures and myths and stories
are forming faster than ever in history.
Our grasp on a common story and mythos is weak and slippery.
Oh my God!
How do we make sense of things
when we collapse the infinite fidelity
of information
down into pithy sentences
laid over ominous imagery?
In my search to find someone
who could make sense of this chaos,
I stumbled upon Kirk Packwood,
a writer and anthropologist
who broadly defined the world of memetic magic.
I want to know if it's okay with you...
uh, but, you know, last time, I didn't record anything.
Um, and so, this time, I wanted just to record
our conversation?
Okay.
Tell me, in your words,
what meme magic is?
Kirk Packwood wrote the book, "Memetic Magic:
Manipulation of the Root Social Matrix" in 2004.
Since he published his book,
the ideas and images have gained traction
on the various 'chans' of the internet.
Unbeknownst to him,
the memetic contagion tactics
that Kirk described and defined
seemed to most appeal to an intersection
of online chaos magicians and the alt-right.
His book has been credited by various online sources
as their guidebook to using meme magic.
I'm looking for, like, what is it?
What the... What the fuck is it?
What is magic?
What even is it?
Nobody knows.
So what is it?
So I... So I keep looking, you know?
Maybe it's memes.
I mean, that's... That's the thing.
I keep saying it because lately...
if I make a meme, it happens.
While living in Los Angeles, I met Billy Brujo.
He was a YouTuber
who was very active in the chaos magic community.
I found him online actually,
while I was researching how the sigil work,
that is fundametal in chaos magic,
was key in the development of meme magic
on 4chan and Facebook.
Coincidentally,
Billy was already familiar with Kirk and his book.
He frequently spoke of the importance of Kirk's book
to the early meme magicians at the turn of the 21st century.
We're trying to still be scientific.
We're trying to still say that, like,
the old ways are not the best ways,
and um...
but if we maybe look at a sampling of the old ways,
then we can see some theme
and we can figure out how to apply this
to, like, make a magic that works.
Kirk's book inspired me.
H... you know, how...
did you feel about the, uh...
the alt-right using.
Kirk's book and Kirk's work as
as a foundational text to...
- Oh did they actually... - Yeah.
- Quote it? - Yeah.
- Oh geesh. - Uh huh.
And that's why he's... he...
So he published in 2004,
and then took it off the market in 2006
because he noticed that the majority of people
who were consuming the work were actually...
not the people that he intended
the work to be consumed by.
- Well this is... - And therefore became
overwhelmed with guilt.
This is a sad thing.
You know, umm...
Uh, he did... he did write the book about meme magic,
and "the Meme Magic is real"
became a rallying cry.
But is it his fault? I mean,
Are you gonna blame JD Salinger, you know,
for the death of
John Lennon?
Hey! Hey!
Way back when... When I read Kirk's book,
and, like, memes weren't even much of a thing yet
I mean, that was way back when.
That was the golden age of memes.
And he had written it years before, like...
Memes were this whole, like, hieroglyphic language of, uh...
like, the advice animals is a good example
because it's, like, they had the Advice Mallard,
then they had the Insanity Wolf.
And then, uh, whatever,
Bad Luck Brian, Good Guy Greg,
Good Girl Gina,
and all of that, you know. It was, like...
It's the same joke every time,
but because the caption is different,
it's different.
But it still, overall, has the same
flavor, same sort of meaning.
So almost like the tarot cards, it's like...
Each one of these images that we re-caption,
it has a meaning, and we all agree on this meaning
unspokenly.
But a meme is only as good as its relevance.
Pepe the Frog began as a character
in Matt Furie's comic series,
"boy's club" in 2005.
He was presented as the archetypal slacker,
who didn't really care about much.
Although Pepe remained relatively dormant,
over the next several years, he came into his own
as the face of the anonymous online poster.
His image started regularly appearing on 4chan in 2010.
And soon became the unofficial mascot
of the popular board, Politically Incorrect or /pol/.
/pol/ became one of the few places
where the young and disgruntled
gathered to talk about the things
you can't talk about in polite society.
Some genuinely felt
like this was their only venue to express themselves.
And some were merely edgelords.
/pol/ is the site's attempt at a politics board,
but, like many spaces on 4chan,
anonymity has bred a space for extremist and fringe ideas.
Throughout the year preceding
the 2016 election in the United States,
the representation of Pepe
as the "Everyman" on the internet
came to signify much more
for the people who wielded his image.
As demonstated by the policing of morality
in Victorian England,
and during Prohibition in the United States,
the more you repress something,
the more desperately people want to do it.
Online cancel culture
has that same effect in today's America.
Most people forced into this environment
will end up longing for a place
where they can say absolutely anything.
The chans offer them that freedom.
I... I drew
a frog magician on the bottom of the Memetic Magic cover,
and it isn't just that it's on the cover,
I mean, you'd have to have my perspective on the world,
and understand all that we talked about
to know why I believe that.
But it isn't just that.
This was also the first book about meme magic.
And that's a huge coincidence. It isn't just any book.
Pepe really was a casualty, if anything,
because.
I don't think that Pepe was meant to be
involved.
It's just that it all happened on 4chan,
and at the time,
Pepe was the face of the anonymous poster.
And everybody had a Pepe meme,
and any time that you
didn't know what else
to have an image of with your post,
you would post a Pepe.
So it just turned out that when whoever started looking,
all these anti-Hillary posts,
all these pro-Trump posts were all Pepe.
Just because
Pepe was the only meme that was, like, left.
Right.
And that's actually what I've been talking to.
You're friends with him right?
- Yeah. - Yep.
About, uh,
that phenomenon that the Right called meme magic.
- Or memetic magic. - Yeah.
With the Pepe, and the Kek,
and they created that whole mythos surrounding him.
Why?
Right.
/pol/ is a place of irreverence and chaos.
So when Donald Trump came onto the political scene in 2015
his brash antics and rejection of the establishment
fit the mold for them.
He embodied their frustration with the status quo,
and he quickly became /pol/'s candidate of choice.
Memes blending Trump and Pepe's likeness
were blossoming all over the chans,
and spreading out into the internet.
Simultaneously, the slang term "lol" fell out of favor.
In its place, a new term of synonymous meaning
rose to common use.
"Kek."
Kek also happens to be a frog-headed god.
He is the deification of the primordial concept of darkness
in ancient Egyptian religion.
As a symbol of darkness,
Kek also represented obscurity and the unknown.
Chaos.
Kek was also known as the Bringer In of Light.
And who else, at that point,
had been declared a Bringer of Light into the world
by zealous supporters?
Trump.
The users felt like something was actually happening.
Something monumental was being fertilized
by their shitposting.
They rallied behind Kek, and, in turn, deified Pepe.
Their solidarity became known as the Cult of Kek.
How could Kek become so powerful?
The answer lies in chaos magic.
Flushed with excitement over the synchronicities
involving their campaign for a Trump/Pepe ticket,
the chaos magicians of /pol/
hurled themselves even further into the cause,
leveling up in this new simulation.
One of the core tenets of chaos magic
is the creation of magic sigils
to codify and project one's will into the universe.
Create an image that represents your will and/or desire.
Focus on it. Believe in it.
And the universe will work on your behalf.
The philosophy behind chaos magic
relies on spontaneous, devout belief,
and then a suspension of that belief.
The suspension, or detachment,
was demonstrated with irony by many of the posters
who spread these memes.
Most people on these forums only satirically believed
that Donald Trump was chosen
by the ancient Egyptian diety, Kek.
Chaos magic tears down the idea
that dogma and strict doctrine
are the only paths to your desire.
But the line between belief and glibness can be blurred
when there's an underlying mixture of
desperation for change
and a general sense of alienation.
So without many other social options,
this large group of people on the chans
focused their united desire towards a single sigil,
turning it into a hyper-sigil,
which amplified its effectiveness.
Pepe/Kek is 4chan's hyper-sigil.
I still think often when I talk about
memes with people,
they just think of, like, funny internet pictures.
And I'I have to be, like, "No, I'm talking about, like, ideas."
And kind of, like, expand it beyond that.
But I think it's powerful, and I think
the new information, um...
infastructure allows the spread of memes.
Even including, like, funny pictures, right?
You can, like, take a picture of a dude with a hat,
and all of the sudden, he's, like, Scumbag Steve.
And this is like, this thing that's applied to everything.
But it's even more powerful with ideas about
politics and culture, and more, like, substantive things.
And it's a primary weapon of the current, like,
insurgency, the Trump insurgency.
I met Dave in Los Angeles
at the beginning of my research.
He was my best friend's roommate.
And I got to know him
through heated discussions in their living room.
I definitely thought Trump was Hitler-îsh
when I voted 'cause I
posted this status on Facebook,
a picture of my "I Voted" sticker,
and said, "Go fuck yourself, Donald Trump." Right?
So like, I'm virtue signalling,
but, um, I believed it wasn't, like, just a virtue move.
So that was election day,
but I feel like it was, like, a month.
Because, shortly after that,
I read the situational assessment.
And I kinda clicked things, and then I was like, "Oh shit."
So definitely by...
The election was what? November.
I think, like, by the end of October.
Or... October, November...
- December. - By the end of December,
I was probably...
I, at least, like, was questioning.
It's like coming out, you know.
First you have to come out to yourself.
I came out to myself as, like, "Oh, I'm, like
pro-Trump maybe."
And then it's, like, baby steps to do it, like, more publically.
There's a matrix, and Fox News
is part of the Matrix as much as MSNBC.
And you can get outside of it,
and there's a lot of interesting stuff happening,
happening outside of the matrix.
Um, you just need someone to offer you
a red pill, that like fits your...
your worldview.
Laughter, somehow, makes stuff happen.
And, uh, whether it's because
the... the, like, the banishing thing,
whether it's because it gets your mind off of it,
or whether it's because
laughing has some kind of invigorating energy,
you know, or,
maybe, you know, maybe
it's because when you're laughing,
you're literally having, like,
an insanity... you know, temporary insanity.
I'm not sure.
Um, but yeah, there's something about laughter,
and I don't think that the Left
laughs enough.
It's just mass hysteria.
You know, you post something, and
it might not even be magic. It's just that...
lately, because of targeted ads, and like, uh,
browsers and apps reading all your posts,
so that they can decide what ads to send you.
You make a post about something,
and then suddenly, all your friends are posting
about the same thing, you know,
or all these ads are coming up for the same thing,
and it seems like magic, but it's really like
the ghost in the machine feeding it back to you.
And that's really not...
There's really nothing magic about that.
But, like, amongst magic people,
we're looking for that. We're looking for magic,
so we find it, you know.
So, like, we see a coincidence,
and we're willing to write off that, you know,
the robots are behind it.
But you know, on the other hand,
there's some stuff I can explain.
The scientific method
is nothing more than
doing an experiment,
noting your results,
and seeing if you can repeat that experiment,
and get the same results.
So, if you're a skeptic,
it doesn't hurt to try
to do a magic, you know.
To try and cast a spell. To try and pray to a god.
Can you take a note?
Can you write down in a journal
what day and time you prayed to god for what?
And then make a note, if you got that thing.
And if you got it, try it again.
And if you can do it a second time,
it's no longer a matter of faith.
It's an experiment that has calculable results.
If you can do it a third time, and a fourth time,
then it's a fact.
That's how science is done.
While exploring this
dark application of magic online,
I was searching for a physical place to anchor myself.
I decided the root in Las Vegas
because it was the most foreign place I could live
while still being a five-hour drive away from my home.
One week after moving into my condo,
the Las Vegas shooting happened.
Tragedy and shock.
But not even a pause before people began to question
the reality of the situation.
This questioning community
became the cross-section I invested myself in
for nine more months.
One of these ladies
at my meet-up group who sees entities
said that when she walked up and down the Strip,
she was, like,
terrified because she said
she's never seen such huge entities
as she's seen on the Strip in Las Vegas.
Entities meaning...?
Dark spirits, or what have you, you know.
There's certain things that will draw these spirits
into the people, and then
they're being controlled.
They're not in control of themselves.
They're being controlled by other outside forces.
I met Carole through Meet-Up.com.
She hosts weekly meditation groups at her house
where she would gather various healers, speakers,
and other figures involved
in the esoteric spirtual practices.
The other thing that's really important to me
is actually the science behind spirtuality
and also the science, um...
If you...
When over two thousand architects
and other major builders
go into a building and analyze
why it came down, like 9/11,
and they're telling you there's no freaking way...
At least, especially the third building.
There's no way it should have ever gone down that way.
Only a Las Vegas blow-up building
is gonna go down like that.
People are...
Do not want to think that their government could
hurt them. The United States:
"No, we're the..." But geeze!
We're the only country in the world
that's literally doing what Hitler did,
running around, attacking other countries.
And moving in, and taking over their resources,
or what have you. I mean,
Why was it terrible for Hitler to do it, and not for us?
I don't understand that.
I know that when I make up my mind,
I'm guided to an answer.
I'm guided to where I'm supposed to go.
I'm guided to what I'm supposed to say.
- Is cam all ready? - Yeah.
- Hi! - You're fine!
Okay, ugh.
Whenever you come is always great.
Yeah, hi!
- Always late or always better. - Yeah.
I'm like, ten minutes behind.
Hi, hon. You look great.
So um, let me think,
what else I should tell you, uh...
I think I mentioned yesterday that
there are, uh... There have been
things that have happened in here
which are very strange.
Like, vortexes set up.
And I'm going to be
giving you a video, so you can... If you wanted to
just show a little bit of that.
So that people could see
something that I've never seen before.
Right.
And I've just never seen it before.
I think it's pretty amazing.
It's a vortex?
Um, well, the fact that, uh,
this cat that I had, that was very psychic.
Anyway, had her for eighteen years,
She's the one that discovered it on the stairs.
And um...
And for eight weeks, two hours a day,
she would go around in circles,
crying and scratching, and looking at me.
- There was nothing there. - It was a vortex.
There was actually a hyperbaric beam trying to get through.
And the cat was trying to protect me.
One time,
the father of my son got very mad,
and he kicked my scroll.
And I warned him,
"Don't mess with that."
He kicked it on the left side,
and it went flying through the air.
'Cause he was a violent person.
Two weeks later, he's walking
across the street Sunset Boulevard,
but he decides to...
burrow his way out as soon as it...
As soon as, um, the light changes.
Mhm.
And he got hit by the car on the left side,
and he went flying through the air,
and went right through the windshield of the guy's car.
And then he didn't get any money,
because the guy had no insurance, so...
It's kind of a karmic thing.
People come here, and they're, like,
"Why am I here? Why am I..."
They don't understand, you know.
They can't figure it out, and it's not easy here.
It's really a struggle.
I... I think that you are
you know, part of what's gonna tell the world
like I was telling you.
People are gonna find out
that there is a huge group of people
changing the world, right here in Las Vegas,
and who would have though that?
You don't have to ask
for proof of lineage in Vegas..
Logic is suspended.
It thrives on claiming power and control.
Power of personal agency,
and the illusory control over your experience of the world.
Coming in second to Sedona,
for having the most dense concentration of "light workers"
or those actively involved in esoteric spirtual practices,
Vegas is a repository for these belief systems.
They fester here.
A common goal amongst the group members
is to wake the world up to the truth.
I'm curious of this mission,
given how many truths there seem to be,
even within their own community.
There are multiple to be known.
They're interested in magic to better the world,
while the trolls seem to want to wield magic
to sow chaos and uncertainty.
I grew fond of Carole, despite my knee-jerk skepticism.
I find myself burrowing deeper into this place of chaos.
What am I actually supposed to believe?
Right now?
Really?
Okay.
Yeah. Well, keep in mind,
this wouldn't be consumed by
anyone for at least another year.
It's not...
Okay. You can leave out all the...
You can leave out things that you don't want...
Okay, so, base level,
can be very interesting,
and kind of hard to work with as a person,
because of the way that he thinks.
And he's pretty much one of the purist shamans
that is alive in this generation.
From the actual Toltec tradition
and the way that you shape your thoughts to be fully
within the universe, and present at every single point in time.
What and I have been working on specifically
is a grand, unified theory of physics.
Which is actually providing a basis and a groundwork
to tie literally all of the fields together
using the most simplest methods possible.
And reducing everything down to just
exactly what it is, without any theory,
and without any guesswork.
Because everything we do is purely observant.
And from this, we're pretty much
creating the mathematical basis
for the groundwork of the next Golden Age.
And that's gonna be, like,
levitation, holograms...
you know, tractor beams, teleportation,
all these kinda crazy sci-fi concepts.
We actually have a mathematical way to explain
how to accomplish them with relative ease.
And be able to explain it to the populace
without having them blow their mind up.
God, thank you.
Yeah.
His magic's actually relatable,
and he can teach you.
I literally am not able to teach people how I do mine.
Okay.
'Cause I work macro-scale, as opposed to micro-scale.
And you need... You literally need
madness as a foundation to do it
so it's very dangerous to teach.
Yeah.
The enlightened people, having compassion
and having enlightenment,
they can look at someone dying,
or like atrocities being committed,
can be like, "Okay, I see that, but it's not me."
And just walk on.
And to the rest of society, that's cold and callous,
but to yourself,
that's kinda how you need to operate.
Nick and Mason are living at Carole's house,
while they work on the math behind
a potential grand unifying theory of physics.
They've been working together, since living in Sedona, Arizona,
and their next stop after Vegas is Mexico,
where they will be helping someone establish
his sustainability b-corp.
What the shaman does, like,
when the shaman is chosen by the people,
their job is healing, first and foremost,
because they are the medicine person.
But their other job is storytelling.
And what they're meant to do is help maintain
the story of the world,
and help tell the story of the world.
That's why there needs to be multiple shamans
all around the world,
so they can help, like, maintain that
harmonic energic of, like,
the expression of the Earth itself.
What's your definition of madness?
Pure and total free association of thought.
So it's one, when you are in, like,
eye presence, and, like, just being then...
a thought comes out, and it has no structure,
so it can literally freely associate to any...
of the other levels of, like, interaction and thought.
If you don't know how to use it,
- that's pure madness. - Yeah.
That's schizophrenia, Right.
- That's a lot of psychological... - Which is most people.
Yeah.
If you ran ride that line,
Whenever you have tribes, you have shamans.
So in a sense,
you can see those same aggressive spokesman for Pepe
end up being that tribal shaman.
Enough people will gather around their teachings,
and carry them forward offline.
Our empathetic connections with other people
get completely overwritten
by the sort of "meme-plex"
that's overriding our world.
And they get picked up by the ideology
or the ideological vehicle.
If I'm one person,
I can't stop all these horrible things going on.
But if I can somehow get a hold of a god,
or a demon, or a spirit to work on my behalf,
then I might be able to upset this power differential
that keeps me powerless.
Any time you start getting into an extreme position,
based on something you hear or watch,
it's probably not you that got there.
It's probably something you picked up
and is now riding you.
The abridged timeline
of meme magic affecting real world change
began during the Ebola outbreaks of 2014.
The public announcement of the epidemic
and its ensuing panic
inspired the Ebola-chan meme,
an anime character with hair that looks
like the Ebola virus strand.
Ebola-chan first made her rounds on 4chan on August 7th.
One day before the World Health Organization
declared the Ebola outbreak
an international, public health emergency.
Her image came with text,
threatening users with excruciating pain and death
if they didn't reply on the thread
with the phrase, "I love you Ebola-chan!"
She spread like wildfire,
and a more nefarious intention was concocted.
The plan was to filter misinformation
into the afflicted African countries,
claiming Ebola was created by Westerners
with the sole purpose of wiping Africa off the map.
In countries where there are people already suspicious
of scientific treatment,
this memetic contagion could have been deadly.
Even though many on the chans
considered her to be their small success,
the desired outcome of total and enduring pandemonium
didn't come to fruition.
The forums continued to try their hand
at internet magic.
So in September 2015,
a user on /pol/ created a post
entitled "Winter-chan will save us."
The idea was to create a character
who would be used to summon
an especially harsh winter throughout Europe.
This winter created by the Winter-chan
would be painful or fatal for those fleeing the Middle East.
Soon, the idea was embellished upon
to include Nordic runes and sigils
in an effort to attach the meme to an ancient Norse deity.
Which in turn would increase the efficacy of the posts.
While the European winter of 2015
wasn't harsher than any previous or following winter,
a crucial element from this trial run was encoded.
The marriage between memetic image and deity.
The necessary groundwork had been laid out
for the Kek Wars of 2016.
She'd been helping out a lot, and, you know,
she say that she'd like to call us
"light workers", and...
you know, she believe we come into her
and she sends us out, so it's like, when we find her,
we already know our mission in life.
What we need to do, and, you know,
- Can we close this? - Oh yeah.
And so we come to hers, and like, we already know
what we need to do
to go against the evil in the world, and
to bring light back into it, and we just need, you know,
her word, you know,
and let us know we on the right path, and
we're not alone
in this... in this whole thing.
Yeah, we're ready to break this world up.
Sean attends Carole's meditation groups regularly,
and is stationed at Nellis Airforce Base,
right outside of Las Vegas.
He's grown tired and skeptical of the military agenda,
and isn't afraid to let people know.
Uh, I joined the military when I was 20.
I had a good friend who talked me into joining.
I've been in the military for about two and a...
Hell, eight and a half years now.
And it's been an amazing experience.
I am a...
cybersecurity
professional in the military.
So I just monitor the Airforce Network,
prevent hacks, cyber-attacks from happening.
I say Vegas is a great place to distract, you know,
people with a lot of lies and things that go on.
Military is the same way, like,
even when you feel like you're onto something, or
or I'll open up to something, a big distraction will happen.
Like, we're going to war with another country, or
maybe another terrorist attack happened
that we can focus on. People just get distracted
on just what's going on around the world.
And you're not convinced that these
terrorist attacks are actually
- done by terrorists? - Well, yeah.
I'm not, uh... So one thing about...
Yes, and no, like, um, some things...
Like, I don't believe in terrorism
in regards to people...
strapping bombs to themselves and blowing things up.
You know, in being in the military,
we take the oath, you know, to defend the country,
against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and
I believe it's also, like I said, domestic enemy
you know, among us.
People waking up to today, you know,
what's that sign that say, uh...
85% of the people are deaf, dumb, and blind.
10% keeping them that way,
and then 5% is trying to wake everybody up.
So it seems like that's the way it is these days.
You're that 5%.
I think I'm part of the 5%, and I think...
I think people are waking up by the hundreds of thousands
like, just every day, like, you know.
Like in the military, and just,
abroad, like, people...
People are in uproar everywhere around the world.
I believe the world was waiting on America
to just, you know, to rise up.
Hello?
Hello.
Hi! Hey, um...
Are you okay to film today?
Um, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, okay, yeah.
Okay, alright. Three... Three PM?
- Yeah, that works. Yeah. - Okay, I'll see you then.
Okay, goodbye.
Oh what?
Oh, I think she's...
The same way liberal elites
look down on Vegas with disdain,
they look down on the middle class,
blue-collar workers,
Trump voters.
They spit onto and into their mirror image.
For an accurate representation is outdated,
Las Vegas isn't a funhouse mirror.
It doesn't distort reality.
Rather, it inverts the expectations we have
of our attachment and experience of an everyday reality.
It mirrors American culture,
and so far, as it reflects the behaviors of the public.
Looking down on Vegas with disdain
is a common, accepted, and encouraged practice.
As a physical and metaphysical place,
it evokes shame.
But a displaced shame
that is easy to assign to anyone except yourself.
A place to comfortably deride and indulge in
state-sanctioned self-deprecation.
The waste bin produced alongside the consumptive boom
of the 20th century.
People generally gravitate towards magic
when the society they live in makes them feel small.
But even if you're denied access
to conventional sources of power,
you can still exercise power over your own consciousness.
Magic then becomes the only option
for those who are:
A. Denied any other way of pursuing their goals,
and B. Denied ernest solutions
for their economic and social woes.
That's not to say that magic doesn't exist
for the powerful and privileged.
It does.
But in a sanitized and passive package.
Think: The Secret, crystal healing,
and mindfullness meditation.
The sort of magic exists to persuade its practitioners
that nothing can be wrong with the world
because they're in control of their own minds.
And that any remaining problems can be counted on
to disappear in due time,
when the right policies are implemented,
and the right people are elected.
It is a tool to help them remain as comfortable as possible
without the intrusive reality
that a large portion of the population
doesn't have the same tools of privilege.
Liberals take their privilege of education and social status
to then deride those who don't have
the same ethics or morals.
They attempt to cancel and silence people
in order to maintain an illusion of superiority.
Malleable by intent, like any tool of the mind,
magic can be used to uphold a system,
or destroy a system.
The pendulum will always swing between the extremes.
And whichever culture is forced to go underground
out of fear that they'll be reprimanded by the mainstream
will experiment with tools of change at their disposal.
With no one watching,
they're left to experiement with total abandon.
Because they feel like they have nothing left to lose.
A society in the face of crisis
experiences a double upsurge in magic.
Among the excluded
as a way of changing things,
and among the excluders
as a way of hiding from the need to change things.
Yeah, I voted for Hillary
because I wanted the stability of this...
Just this idiosyncratic
desire to pretend like we know what's gonna happen.
That's not... it's just not true.
So am I gonna vote for Trump next? I don't know.
Oh, is there going to be someone more destructive...
Not destructive, okay. Disruptive...
Than Trump?
If they're will be, I'll vote for them.
You know, I've been speaking to some of my friends,
that are not my friends anymore,
because
they just refer to these people as "people from the internet",
"anon..." just these crazy, weird people,
but they are the ones
that are moving our society to where it needs to be.
They're the ones who look at this,
and go "What the fuck?
It has to change. Things have to change."
You just go through your life.
And you're... everything's fine, everything's great.
You do your thing, you go to college,
you meet your college sweetheart,
it's so great.
And then...
And then you're constantly anticipating something.
You're waiting for something to come through,
and you're waiting for
the society to become a certain way that...
That we're meant to become, and it never happens!
It just doesn't happen, and it doesn't happen
and it doesn't happen, and things don't change.
People talk about killing children.
Killing actual babies?
What the fuck? What the actual fuck?
Like how have we gotten to this point in our society
where we discuss these things.
It just...
Eventually, you look at
all of this from further away,
and you realize that the only way
for anything to change is disruption.
So we never...
We haven't spoken about politics yet.
Right, okay.
What's... where do you stand politically?
And I also... I am not of the belief
that we shouldn't talk about politics or religion
at the table. I think that it's the reason why...
Or one of the reasons why
people are unable to actually engage in,
uh, tense dialogue
without becoming upset or taking it personally.
Well, the thing about politics is... is very easy.
I'm not gonna just agree with anybody because
they are not in control,
so it doesn't really matter who is out there, um.
It's... those that are in control of the planet are not
our politicians.
The real people that are in control
are behind the scenes, and you can't see them,
and they're... They go way up high.
There's the White Pope.
Then there's the Black Pope, then there's the Gray Pope.
And then there's the family
of the people that have actually created all the religions
on the planet and everything.
But they work with both sides.
According to my sources,
Obama, uh, he actually...
he actually went to Mars with one of the friends... one of...
Somebody that I interviewed that was
in the secret space program,
and he time-travels and everything.
He has time-traveled. His father was in the CIA,
and he was time-traveling at age five.
But anyway...
what kind of tea would you like, darling?
Do you have anything non-caffeinated?
Probably. Let me check things out.
I had isolated myself enough.
Magic is magic.
The only difference in outcome is intention.
All that was left was to finally meet Kirk in person.
I'm a very underestimated person.
I'm an extraordinarily underestimated person.
I'm just... You think, "Look at me. I'm just some...
Dude. I'm just...
Perhaps a person whose..."
I don't know.
I don't look special. I may look a little rundown, or whatever.
And that's because of my health, and because of...
situations. Hey, a giant squid.
I love them, um...
We could get a snap of that.
When I say that,
if I were to say something, like
in five years,
if I dedicated myself to it,
I could turn this whole fucking country upside down
ideologically. Me and a group of five people.
I'm dead serious. I could do that.
How to put it... um...
Some people out there are extraordinarily
serious about this sort of stuff.
We may look unimpressive on the outside.
We may be in shitty economic conditions.
But, um...
we've already proven you can transform an entire country
with a group of twelve people
focusing on... just messing around on the internet.
And that's because we're not locked into the, um,
the... the traditional ways of doing things.
The ways to transform the world have changed.
New opportunities have opened.
Now, my role in it...
Spirtually, I was the one who set the framework
which in... Which this all happened.
- All... all... - Which is?
- Is the frog. - Is the frog.
Is the frog and the way it manifested itself.
- Okay. - It's not a joke.
Yeah, sure. We'll try these out.
Which... you pick.
I can get 'em for you, if you want.
'Cause you've obviously spent a lot to come up here.
What do you like? I don't...
Maybe just not the powder,
'cause I don't want to get it all over myself.
Yeah, yeah. Why don't we get one of those sprinkles?
Alright, let's see...
Society tells me I'm here.
I think I'm real smart,
and that I'm better than what society says,
so I think I'm here.
I'm really here.
And you can't see that except
through the expression of the spirtuality that
is evident in what happened in the Kek movement.
The element of chaos is important to...
Really important. It's a necessary part of everything,
because without it, you get stagnation.
It's chaos, like...
I could do chaos right... Everybody could.
Which is a stupid example.
Let's say I see some woman I think is attractive out here.
Even if I'm not attractive any more at all,
'cause I'm immensely out of shape.
If I... I could change the course of my and her life
by just approaching her, saying, "Hi, how's it going?"
You know, "you look good." Flirting with her,
trying to get her to ask out.
I could break those social barriers.
I'm not supposed to approach her because
I'm... look like I do.
And I'm not like... I don't have a ton of money, and I...
I'm not running a business. I'm supposed to be able to
attract... approach certain types of women.
But that's exactly why I would do it.
That's why I do it, in my 20s. It's... You want to...
You wanna introduce this element of chaos
to break down social hierarchies.
Inspired by InfoWars and the likes,
the fringe theories that accompanied the 2016 election
were prolific.
Some may remember the many rumors
filtering in about the Democratic candidate,
Hillary Clinton.
They range from claims of her reptilian heritage
to claims that she was hiding a serious health condition
from the media and the voters.
At some point, /pol/ focused their efforts on a single goal.
To make Hillary Clinton collapse in public.
There's an acronym used by practicing mages:
T.S.W.
This Shit Works.
Used to describe the moment
you finally have a first-hand experience of magic,
that transcends illusion.
The moment your intention has an effect on the material world.
The chans went through their own TSW moment
on September 11th, 2016,
because three things happened.
First, Clinton publically denounced
Pepe the Frog as a right-wing hate symbol.
Then, as she left the memorial service
for the World Trade Center attacks,
she swayed, almost fell down,
and had to be hauled into her SUV.
The chaos magicians of /pol/ were shocked.
And had to face the potency of their collected power.
Their shit worked.
Millions of people that browsed 4chan
have imbedded the image of Pepe
with their hatred for Hillary and the Establishment.
They wanted a Trump victory.
And that's exactly what happened.
We want Trump!
The thing that the Right has got going for it,
in terms of memes,
is they're like the spearhead, or the vanguard of this whole...
the Alt-Right is the vanguard of this...
meme magic thing. Now, the way to explain it...
Another way to look at it is...
Let's say we're talking about all this meme magic stuff
as information warfare.
If you look at it from that theoretical framework,
Like, uh... Sci-Ops.
Yeah, and it definitely is
- partially that. - Right.
I mean, it's just propaganda.
- Yeah, but it's... - Basically. One side of it.
Sure.
But it's the very... Most modern, pinnacle form,
And that's kinda the point. It's...
It's like warfare in the sense that...
You've gotta focus on the new... New tactics that work
at... for a particular time and a particular circumstance, so...
The reason why the US is able to project so much military power
if you don't count things like nukes,
is because of air superiority.
Our entire military doctrine is based around
setting up conditions where you can use that airpower.
Now if...
Without that airpower, we're no different than any other...
It's not like our ground troops are superior people
to the ground troops they're fighting against.
The troops they're fighting against can't even fire back
because they're getting shot at by planes that are, like,
up there.
You can't even fight.
It doesn't matter how good of a soldier you are.
You're gonna get beat.
Well, this is what's going on with memes.
I remember the first Skype call we had,
and you said, isolation breeds mutation.
- Yeah. - And that was sort of
your experience in... in...
transmitting that... Those experiences
into this world that you created.
Or not even created, that you tapped into.
Yeah, and the reason is because I'm
not necessarily an outsider by nature.
I like to be social like everybody else.
But I've kinda been forced to the edges.
So when I find people that
see the world somewhat the same way,
it's always a shock to me, because most of the time,
people are like,"You're not really seeing that.
You're being paranoid. They don't care about you
one way or another."
Well, sure they do. Everybody cares about everybody.
Particularly if you're intelligent.
I'm judging every single person
that we walk by.
Just quickly, you know, but...
So, and if you're intelligent, that's what you gotta do.
Yesterday I attended my mom's funeral.
I've been ideologically opposed to funerals
for the last ten years.
I think what's most important
is how to treat a person when they're alive.
I think it's less important
how you treat a person after they've passed.
However, respect for those who have passed
is important as well.
The death of my mom was a tough experience.
However, I realize now that it doesn't really matter so much
if it was a tough experience for me.
I'm being selfish, even making the claim
"the death of my mom was a tough experience."
The person for whom the experience was tough
was my mom.
There's a lot I could say about my mom and her passing.
Most of it, I'm not going to say.
Even what I'm going to say might be
the wrong course of action.
Our society and humans, in general,
are very unforgiving of weakness
both at a conscious and subconscious level.
By expressing my feelings, I am, in part, demonstrating
weakness. Thus, I open myself up
to potential attacks, just
by talking about my feelings and experiences.
I only tell my mom's brother about this, and no one else,
because this is the sort of thing I can't even talk about
with people I know.
But after my mom passed, for two days there were...
There's real poltergeist activity
apparent in our residence, particularly around me.
It's not the first time I've noticed
after a hugely charged emotional experience,
poltergeist phenomenon occuring around me.
I don't know why it was happening,
but I think my mom was trying to communicate with me.
Because the messes were happening to me
and are happening around me, and as far as I know,
not anyone else.
Perhaps she was trying to tell me she was alright,
but I'm not really sure what she was trying to tell me.
I'm not really sure what the messages were,
but I saw the messages, and that's been kind of a...
dynamic that's been going on with most of my life.
I have these spirtual gifts, but nobody... nothing is telling me
why I have them, or what they're supposed to be used for.
They probably have six or eight good statues
out there in the rain too, but, um...
but they change their stock.
Why do you like the statues?
Honestly, they've got spirtual power in them
at this place,
and I think it channels from the plants into the
statues, and it's also the arrangements.
Just an artistic arrangement, if you look at this stuff.
I think it all combines
to make that spirtual power.
It also suggests whoever owns this place
probably has some kind of connection with that.
And I know that sounds strange, but it's based on
genuine observation over fifteen years.
So...
Let's say 30% of everybody
that uses Kek actually believes in the magic.
And there's another 20... 50%
that thinks, "Wow, that was weird,
but I really don't believe in magic."
And that's because society's taught them not to believe in it.
But they still saw it.
That's why they're thinking, "That was kinda weird."
And they won't realize that
it's really real until ten to fifteen years down the line
when they deprogram themselves.
Whether Trump was running a con all along,
or has simply been ineffectual,
more and more people are starting to conclude
that the Trump train has badly derailed.
Andrew Yang, a long shot
Democratic candidate from New York,
acquired a band of enthusiastic supporters
among the internet memelords
and underground influencers
that provided fuel for the Trump candidacy.
Their support for him was an anomaly
because of his Democratic position.
But the fact that he mentioned issues affecting white people,
was extremely validating to shunned members
of the dissident Right
who want the interests and needs of white America
to be addressed.
In despair, that the chance for Trump to save the Republic
from liberal progressiveness has failed,
they concluded that America was dead,
and therefore should pick over the carcass.
We saw memes of Pepe
being showered with money by a smiling Andrew Yang.
Rather than plug the holes in the sinking ship,
they lit small fires on board to sink it faster.
The attempts to replicate the effects of the Kek movement
with Yang failed.
By the beginning of 2020,
meme magic seemed like it had run its course.
Any attempts at creating something like 2016
seemed facile.
But what emerged was a monster.
Kek has re-emerged on the forums after a long dormancy.
Hello friends!
And a special hello to all the witches out there
that are doing magical work to protect protestors and you know,
hex white supremacy.
Um, a word of warning.
So I mentioned in one of my videos last night
that you're kidding yourself if you don't think
that the other side has people doing magical work for them.
I got my ass handed to me last night.
So as you can see
all the candles are burning pretty well now.
That doesn't really have much bearing on the spell,
but when I did these two...
This one was for protection,
and then this one was for a call for change and road-opening.
Both of those when I did the energy release
and lit the candle, they landed super well.
But when I did this one,
which is the hex for the guilty parties,
it was like running headlong into a brick wall.
I instantly got slapped with a migraine,
and I woke up this morning
feeling like I'd been hit by a car.
Whoever is doing this work for the other side,
it is a group of people that are very powerful,
practicing magic that is very old.
Be careful.
What would you see the future
application of meme magic being?
Or evolving into?
Uh, I kind of...
in a general, abstract sense I see it
eventually evolving into a situation where you...
Like you see in sci-fi books, like,
At some point, there's gonna be
much more intense forms of
thought, mind control coming through propaganda,
and media transmissive channels. It's already pretty intense.
Hey witches. Let's use white supremacy,
and police brutality to learn
a little something about magic today.
So you probably see these numbers and this acronym
thrown around a lot here on Tik Tok
and other social media.
But have you ever considered that these are formulas
for evoking an idea?
So Trump
and the government have their own witches at hand.
They have their own people spirtually protecting them.
Whether it be practitioners, witches,
or even a religion protecting them.
They have something behind them.
They're a strong position of power.
Of course, they'll have someone that will protect them.
The Left has started to respond
to the magicians of the Right,
and have been using magic in their own way.
The manifestation and representation
of magic on the Left
makes sense in the context of the liberal image.
Counterculture witches that adher
to the same occult aesthetic.
There is no chaos.
Witches on the Left have also gathered online.
There's a small presence on the boards
that meme magic originally sprung from.
But mostly we see them on Instagram and Tik Tok.
Similar to the attempt in 2016, following Trump's election,
and again in 2019 against Brett Kavanaugh,
The Black Lives Matter protests gave them another chance
to hex Trump and police brutality.
Which they did en masse for a very concentrated amount of time.
There were candles burned and a choreographed call
to protect those fighting in the streets
and to bring the perpetrators into the light of justice.
But as soon as those calls for magic came,
they soon quickly went.
As go the short cycles of outrage online.
Merely weeks later, the witches of Tik Tok
or Witch-Tok, were calling on each other to hex the moon.
Once again, divided and distracted
by their drive for individuation within their merlu.
Without the same level of detachment
can the Left be as effective.
I can remember at 26,
I went through some intense stuff then,
and it took a real intense shock
to really shake me out of my belief.
Um, out of my programming,
as a mainstream person, to believe in
the kind of stuff I believe in now. I mean,
It would... took a shock.
And I'm sure a lot of them went through
the same sort of things. I think on the Right,
you've got a combination of people that were drawn to it
or already real occultists.
And you've got people who've experienced enough to know
that this stuff is real to some degree.
It's not very controllable, but it's pretty real.
And the Left, I think,
is starting where the Right started before.
2016 was a shift in consciousness,
and now we're seeing the consequences played out.
The figurehead is no longer important.
What came out of this journey
was the realization that the true power laid
in the collective.
Though with that power comes consequences.
And what we've seen is that we can't be trusted either.
You have to have those warriors.
I feel like I'm a warrior because
I'm going to tell people the truth,
and I'm gonna go out and make some changes.
And I think everyone should.
Yes, I will meditate.
Yes, I will send out love and light.
But I'm not gonna sit on my butt and not do anything
like a lot of the spirtual people do.
Any spirtual people that are listening,
you have to do something too.
Yes, improve yourself. Send out love and light.
Forgive people. Work on yourself.
Um, you know, imagine a perfect future.
Um, I always say... I...
Live in a beautiful, perfect world
full of abundance, prosperity
peace, happiness, love, joy.
Love, love, love.
I'll guess I'll, sort of, put this sort of on.
This was...
It really didn't put me down that much.
I'm just like kind of hurt and annoyed about
the abruptness of how this played out.
Let's say, the truth is at level one.
I've talked to you at around
level three, occasionally dipping...
Rarely dipping into level two.
I just can't go to level one with anyone.
Because if I do, I'm afraid
you're just not gonna want to associate with me
because you're going to be scared that I'm
genuinely lunatic, or that...
You just won't believe it. You'll think I'm...
- hyping it out, so... - I believe it.
Well, it's true.
And most people, I won't go below
level seven.
- Yeah. - I've been a level three
three and two with you, so
you know more than anybody, besides me.
But even with you, I couldn't go to one.
- I just couldn't do it. - Right, right, right.
- Um, it's too much, and. - Mhm.
Secrets like this have a very good way of hiding themselves
because...
as you can see how hard it is for me to talk about it.
Even with someone who's willing to listen.
Even with someone who showed support and believed in it.
I still am not doing it.
Secrets hide themselves.
I can't talk about it, so
- that's why it stays a secret. - Right, right.
- Alright. - It was good to meet you.
Have fun in, um,
- Houston? - Houston, yeah.
- 70 degrees. - 70 degrees.
- I kinda like Texas. - It'll be nice.
- Well, see what you think of it. - Yeah, well...
- I will see you. - I'll see you.
- Bye. - Terrible at goodbyes,
but goodbye.
By way of devoted practice,
Pepe unified and codified a set of values yet unspoken,
and has changed the instruments of influence
far longer than its own relevance.
An influence that can be harnessed
by anyone who wishes to.
What was being learned in 2016
has now become standard practice.
The Kek movement didn't just produce a meme.
But a model on how to obtain power in the online century.
A model that has proved infinitely mysterious
and bountiful.
There's a force, a magic,
that is being wielded by both the Right and Left
to tip the scales of power.
The effectiveness of this power comes down
to the devotion to a real, rigorous magical practice.
You cannot say it isn't real
or it isn't happening.
But you can share that these voices
are part of a consensual reality.
Unfortunately,
a reality we all have to share.