When the internet convinces you you're being followed

Have you ever been gang stalked? Or gang stalked someone? Hopefully not. But if you don’t even know what that is, today we’re talking about a weird little thing called “gang stalking.” That’s when TIs (“targeted individuals”) believe they’re being followed by… someone. Or a group of unknown people who seek to ruin the TI’s life through constant surveillance and harassment. Who are the people who think they’re being gang stalked, and why? Carson Pace of the Callous Daoboys joins us to talk about his fascination with the gang stalking community and its history. We’re going way back to 1995, with its origins on the “Mind Control Forum,” to “Gang Stalking World,” and up till today’s modern incarnations like r/gangstalking — and obviously its connections to QAnon, Pizzagate, and Epstein. Our guest and TI, Carson Pace, can be found on X, the everything app @Carsondaoboys or on Instagram @carsonfromdaoboys. You can also find Callous Daoboys everywhere you listen to banging music — or if you’re in Europe, they’re kicking off a tour in November. Speaking of tours, catch Garbage Day LIVE in Brooklyn on October 27th at Baby’s All Right: https://wl.eventim.us/event/garbage-day/705215?afflky=BabysAllRightBrooklyn&utm_source=www.garbaged And in Washington, DC on November 18th at Pubkey: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/garbage-day-live-presents-garbage-250-tickets-2003076360315 Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonuses & exclusives, and access to our members-only Discord? Sign up for a membership for just $6.66 a month at https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Sponsors If you’re struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NOCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at nocd.com/PANIC Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Production Coordinator: Josh Fjelstad - Researcher: Adam Bumas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 0:46Speaker 02

  The last like four days of this tour have been like absolute hell and shit. So our guitar player fell off a seven foot stage and had to spend the night in the ICU the other night. He's fine, but.

• 1:01Ryan Broderick?

  Did you get cool video of it at least?

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Dude, I wish there's not a single good angle of it.

• 1:06Ryan Broderick?

  That's a bummer.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  We were playing in Fort Lauderdale of all places. I'm like, why are you falling off the stage in Fort Lauderdale? What are you doing?

• 1:29Ryan Broderick?

  You do not want to go to a hospital in Florida. No way.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  No, absolutely not.

• 1:34Ryan Broderick?

  That's a good place for me to say to our audience, you know, we are not talking specifically about hardcore today, but we will probably find ways to talk about it.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  Am I the first metalcore adjacent person you've had on?

• 1:49Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, yeah, I think Amamaguchi is probably the closest we've come. So for sure. Yeah.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, that means that what we're talking about, I mean, like, I'm also like the closest to being gang stalked, I think.

• 2:04Ryan Broderick?

  Probably. Yeah. Okay. So like, let's, let me set this up. So welcome to Panic World, the show about how the internet warps our minds, our, uh, our minds, our culture and eventually reality. My name is Ryan Broderick. With me as always is my personal gang stalker, Grant Irving. Uh, we are both very sunburned because we just came back from the UFC fight at the White House, which fucking was probably close to like the, the, what you've been seeing in Florida doing hardcore shows. With me today is Carson Pace of one of my favorite bands. I, I am obsessed with the Callistyle Boys. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I think your new album rocks. It's so fucking good, man. Yeah.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  I know I've said this before, but like this podcast is like kind of all I listened to on tour. Like I pre-downloaded at least like 10 or 12 episodes before our European tour in February. And it was like, it was, it was saving me a little bit.

• 2:58Ryan Broderick?

  Well, thank you so much. Uh, I, I had, uh, I had distracted by the Mona Lisa on loop, basically, uh, when the minute you guys dropped it. Yeah, that song rips. Um, so we're, as you said, we were talking about gang stalking. And this is a topic that Grant and I have discussed. And I was like, I don't want to touch this thing with a 10 foot pole. And you came to us with this idea. So I would love to ask you, what's, what, what's the fascination? Well, let's, let's, let's talk about it.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  So like, just to give you an idea of like what I'm into outside of hardcore, which I would never claim that my band's a hardcore band. That's just like asking for trouble, but.

• 3:41Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. Wait, hold up. We don't want the hardcore subreddit. I always, I now use heavy music, which just sounds so bad and dumb.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  My, uh, my dad recently told me that he tells people I'm in an emo band.

• 3:53Ryan Broderick?

  That's sick. That's great though. That's awesome.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  It's actually fine. That one I'm actually okay with.

• 3:57Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. I'm going to tell people you guys sound like Fall Out Boy. Uh, that way they can.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Kind of do some.

• 4:01Ryan Broderick?

  Well, there's parts that definitely there's like, there's clean vocal parts that do kind of, yeah. Uh, anyway, okay.

• 4:05Speaker 04

  Also, I'm not afraid of emo Reddit. Like that's probably the least now.

• 4:10Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, although you know who you should be afraid of is, do you guys know the, the core jerk subreddit?

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm very afraid of them. I'm extremely afraid of them.

• 4:18Ryan Broderick?

  They're, they're out of their minds. I don't want to be on their bad side ever. Yeah.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  Wait, wait. Can, can one of you describe them for people who are not sickos?

• 4:27Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. So a circle jerk subreddit is like a snark subreddit for a different kinds of stuff. Core jerk is a circle jerk subreddit for all of the hardcore blob of music, I guess.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  We may have to cut this, but uh, someone texted me the other day saying, hey, I started in Atlanta core, I started in an Atlanta circle jerk subreddit to talk shit on local bands. And I was like, why are you telling me this?

• 4:58Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, one of the, one of the top posts on the core jerk subreddit right now is a photo of Def Leppard and it says, is Def Leppard going to be the next Def Core band?

• 5:11Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. Uh, and I think they will be. Um, okay. So yeah, gang stalking. What, what, what brought you to gang stalking?

• 5:18Speaker 02

  To give you an idea of what I'm like outside of music, um, the reason I hired our drummer Marty, the reason he's like in the band is because the first time I met him, he said, I have some opinions on dolphin intelligence that I can't really articulate.

• 5:34Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  And I was like, yeah, man, you're in. I don't care how good you are at drums. Like, yeah, come on. I'm really into like the metaphysics stuff. And I don't know how much of it I believe, but like, I've tried astral projecting and like tried to leave my body through like the CIA gateway process tapes and stuff like that. And like, this is just sort of an extension of it of like my like government paranoia, I guess.

• 5:57Ryan Broderick?

  Um, like it's just something I've always been fascinated with.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  I read a lot of books on the CIA and, and stuff like that. And like, when the gang stalking, when it first came to my attention, it was through Reddit. It was through the subreddit. And I believe there's a, I, I re-watched it for this, for this podcast. There's a Vice documentary on targeted individuals.

• 6:21Ryan Broderick?

  Yep.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Um, and that was like 2011, 2013 or something like that. And I was just fascinated by the like, the, like, obviously like there's like mental illness going on with, with all these people like, and we'll get into that, I'm sure. But like, also there was like hints of it being like kind of real, like the thing that always stuck with me. I know, I know. Believe me, I'm, I'm going to come off like a crackpot on this one. But, um, the thing that always stuck with me was there was somebody on the gang stalking subreddit in like 2015, 2016, who was posting over and over, and I tried to find it. I tried to find it for weeks now, since we said we were going to do this,

• 7:04Speaker 02

  posting over and over an ambulance driving by his house, not having the lights on. Then the second he was, the ambulance was near his house, he would crank the siren, sit outside of that guy's house for like two or three minutes and then drive away. And that guy would post it like once a week and it freaked me out. I was like, even if none of this stuff is real, like this is happening to this guy and that's terrifying. And, you know, I don't know. Maybe he could have been posting the same video over and over. And I was just stupid, but like, I don't know.

• 7:39Ryan Broderick?

  I had an experience like that in college where the house that I would go to smoke weed in, which was basically just like full of guys who were like one level above Juggalos, kinda.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Sure. Yeah.

• 7:51Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. At one point, yeah. They were always friends. They were always watching the VHS tape of the Street Fighter movie. And they once had, they once had boiled hot dogs, but forgotten about it. So there was literally just like hot dog flavored standing water in their kitchen. It was a gross place, right? And so we, you'd sit on this gross couch and you'd, you know, they would roll blunts over a frisbee that all the blunt guts would sit in. And there was this ice cream truck that would drive only around their house, but the motor playing the song had rusted. And so the song was really slow and it would just grind out the ice cream truck song and it would just orbit this stinky house that I smoked weed in. And I was like, I can't come back here anymore. I can't do this. This is a different reality. I don't want to be part of this anymore.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Oh my God.

• 8:35Ryan Broderick?

  I get it. Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  I mean, that alone, the idea of someone torturing you with a siren every night. I was like, or, or an ice cream truck. Either way, I was just like, I was like, oh my God, what if I do something that gets me in trouble with the government? And then they start doing this to me, um, which is just how my mind works. I don't really know why, but.

• 8:53Ryan Broderick?

  There are certain pockets of the internet, certain things on the internet that are the kind of cognitohazards where it like, I have always felt like, okay, if I go too far down this road, I don't want that. I don't want to think this way. Like, I don't want this as part of my brain. And just to set things up, academic definition of gang stalking. refers to the allegations of surveillance, harassment, and general victimization by unknown agents. And so they refer to themselves, as you said, as targeted individuals, and they believe that they are being followed or monitored by someone. And from, this is an account from gangstalking.com that reads, "It's really hard to believe that someone

• 9:34Ryan Broderick?

  or something could set out to destroy the life of another, and seemingly without reason. There is always a reason, though, isn't there? Just sometimes you have to find the rhyme for that reason. Close to a year ago, last July 2006, I learned that all the harassment I had been experiencing for the last six years that I was aware of had been deliberate, coordinated, and funded. What I thought was just slander being spread from within the workplace to my community at large was a much smaller part of a larger operation to destroy my life completely. I was caught up in a covert government investigation that I had never asked to be a part of, or to my awareness, done anything that would put me in the focus of the government." I do think a lot of this, though, is like a paranoid person becoming more paranoid,

• 10:19Ryan Broderick?

  and then acting weird, and then people being like, "That guy's acting weird." I think that is largely it, right?

• 10:25Speaker 02

  I would call myself someone who lurks in these sort of communities.

• 10:29Ryan Broderick?

  You're stalking them, is what you're saying?

• 10:31Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm, yes, I am targeting them, them as individuals. Um, one of the things that I wrote down when I was like, kind of scrolling through all of this to prepare is like, if, if this is some sort of psyop, like if this is like, some sort of seed that was planted similar to like QAnon or whatever, if, that like, it's nearly perfect. Because like, the second that someone thinks they're being targeted, they tell everyone that they're targeted, and then everyone tells them that they're crazy, and they're like, "Well, everyone thinks I'm crazy," and it just keeps going and keeps going. If you wanted to fry someone's brain with this stuff, I feel like it's pretty easy.

• 11:13Ryan Broderick?

  I think so, too. Yeah.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Like, and, and that's kind of where the like, when you guys, when I suggested this, you guys, you guys were like, "Oh, the most depressing shit ever." And I was like, "Ah, no, it'll be fun." And then like, when I started thinking about it in that way of like, how it, you know, it's, it's pre-QAnon, it's pre-Pizza Gate stuff. It's such an easy way for people to fall down the rabbit hole through this stuff. I mean, just by either looking at other people who are being targeted, or just, just knowing about it in general. It feels like the perfect psyop to me, which is scary, very scary.

• 11:51Ryan Broderick?

  It is scary, and it has always creeped me out. And I was sort of curious when it started, because obviously, like, you know, there are reports dating back to the 60s and 70s, I mean, even before, like, there, there have been, throughout history, fears of people being tracked by some sort of government entity or whatever. But, but for our purposes today, our researcher Adam starts this story in 1995. Have you ever heard of the Mind Control Forum, which is a great band name?

• 12:15Speaker 02

  No, that's awesome. Mind Control Forum, sick.

• 12:19Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it's sick. It was set up in 1995, and it's not really about gang stalking exactly, but it does have a victims page, and it, these are victims of mind control. And one of them is named Ken, and it lists Ken as being victimized by voices, dreams, and holographic illusions. He used to be a victim of intense forays by actor agents on the street, but that has subsided since he moves out to the country. And then there's Vera on here as well, who says that she was witnessing activities she wasn't supposed to know about. Vera, not her real name, living with her parents in the San Fernando Valley, found herself the target of stalkers and technical persecutions. Her family acted to

• 13:01Ryan Broderick?

  silence her, and she left to live in the woods. A common theme, I think, with a lot of these people as they go live in the woods. Funny enough, in 2002, the Mind Control Forum was nominated for a Webby Award in the weird category, which is actually, I have a Webby Award for the weird category in this room right now, actually. So...

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Walking on the shoulders of giants, right?

• 13:22Ryan Broderick?

  I know, I know. I don't think I'm being gang stalked for it, but it's possible.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Like, there's a list of victims. I don't know why it was, I thought it was all gonna be celebrities. I thought you were gonna be like, William S. Burroughs, like, you know, I thought it was gonna be like, John F. Kennedy, you know? I thought it was gonna be like a fun list of victims.

• 13:40Ryan Broderick?

  Nope, just, just a couple of random people who moved to the woods, yeah.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Real people who live in the woods now, yeah.

• 13:46Ryan Broderick?

  But it does seem like the Webby Award win put like, a lot of attention on this site, because right after, a whole bunch of other websites started to emerge that are basically kind of documenting the same thing. And we have one here archived, if Grant wants to pull it up, because I want to show you how many fonts there are in the header of this website. It is so good. If we can get it to load. I'm having trouble, uh...

• 14:09Speaker 02

  I got it.

• 14:10Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. So, yeah, this is the "Freedom from Covert Harassment and Surveillance", and it's "Seeking Freedom and Justice for the Victims of Organized Stalking and Electromagnetic Harassment."

• 14:21Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh, and this is '06?

• 14:23Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, this is '06. This was, yeah, the snapshot is from 2006. And there's like, they were like, doing a rally, and they had like, letters that they were gonna mail in. Yeah, it's in DC, and these are people of, uh, these are people who are being victimized by electromagnetic stalking, and there just seemed to be a couple of them just standing in a field.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  There's three of them, by my count.

• 14:45Ryan Broderick?

  Wow, okay.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  And they got, they got one JBL speaker, is what it looks like.

• 14:49Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, yeah, that's a good party.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  I've played shows with Les, man.

• 14:56Ryan Broderick?

  We talk about this phenomenon a lot on this show, where it's like, a person does something really weird on the internet, and then they sort of start to find other weird people on the internet who, and, and sometimes it's great, and then sometimes it's really bad. Um, and like, I guess, like, do you think that's good? Do you think it's good that someone can do this? I don't know.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  If you come at it from the psyop angle, like...

• 15:23Ryan Broderick?

  Wait, so say more about the psyop, say more about the psyop idea.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  So, there's a line of thinking that like, when QAnon was, was getting similar, similar to how I was fascinated with this stuff, I was absolutely floored by QAnon. And like, there's a line of thinking that kind of started back then, that like, Pizza Gate and some of this targeted individual stuff was like, a trial run for QAnon, if it is some sort of government psyop to like, to see if it could overtake the internet like it did, and overtake a bunch of crazy people and help with the, you know, far-right movement and all that stuff. There's a line of thinking, in my opinion, where it's like,

• 16:06Speaker 02

  you know, if you're CIA, and you're like, "Fuck MKUltra, I don't want to use this shit anymore. Why do we have to, why do we have to make math teachers take LSD?" Like, there must be a quicker way to make everyone an insane person, you know?

• 16:20Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  I think this is like, kind of a brilliant way of doing it, of like, putting one credible story out there and just being like, like, similar to the Q drops, where it was like, at first, there were a bunch of people who were just like, "Oh, my God, the, the Q drops are on White House stationery and all this stuff," where it's like, you know, one person who's like, maybe verifiably being targeted, and then, you know, 35 other people on the internet see this person, and they're like, "Wait a minute, that's happening to me," and then, you know, devolves into what it is today. Does that make sense? Am I making sense?

• 16:53Ryan Broderick?

  It does. I mean, it reminds me a lot of, I think, both Behind the Bastards and my favorite documentarian, Adam Curtis, have done stuff on this before, where it's like, you know, the US government is questioning people about UFOs, and they're doing it as a way to scare them into not talking about the fact that they probably saw, like, some sort of drone test, like, 20 years before we knew drones existed or whatever. And then the problem always is like, I guess I'm gonna coin this term, like, psychic blowback, where you start to like, hire the people who believe the conspiracy theory is seeded by our own government, and then now they're in charge of the government, right? So it's like, Marjorie

• 17:33Ryan Broderick?

  Taylor Greene is influenced by QAnon, gets a seat at the table, and is now looking for QAnon. And it's like, well, QAnon never existed, it was a whole, you know, like, so, I, you know, I don't think it's a crazy idea. I think, I, I always tend to go with like, the more, the more reasonable one, where it's just like...

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Of course, yeah.

• 17:52Ryan Broderick?

  But I don't think, no, but I don't think they're exclusive either. Like, I, I think, I also tend to believe that like, the government is extremely inept in this way, where like, they can't predict, like, the, the, the size of what they might do. So it's like, yeah, maybe they are messing with people, and then those people get blogs, and they're sort of, you know, everyone in the 2000s was kind of like, not really thinking that like, blogs would matter. And then it's like, one wins a Webby Award, and now an entire section of the population believes they're being followed by strange people, right? Like, I could kind of see that happening as well.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  You asked if it's a good thing that these people found each other, and, you know, some would, some would maybe argue that it's not a good thing that people in hardcore found each other, but, you know, all of the family and...

• 18:32Ryan Broderick?

  That's true.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  I don't want to be the footloose parents to their targeted individual community, you know? Poopoo their, their relationships, the lifelong friendships that they've made through R slash gangstalking.

• 18:45Ryan Broderick?

  The amount of marriages in r slash gang stalking.

• 18:49Speaker 04

  The divorce rate is so high, though. Such a shame.

• 18:51Ryan Broderick?

  Well, yeah.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Well, they think the other's watching each other.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 18:54Ryan Broderick?

  Where's the trust? Can't get too close. But there is something like we, you know, I used to be a comment moderator. Like, I would read the comments on websites and sort of like moderate.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  Lamgo.com, yeah.

• 19:05Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I was the moderator for Lamgo. Yeah, I was moonlighting at Lamgo and Punk News and I just wanted to be as homophobic and racist as possible.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 19:15Ryan Broderick?

  There is something like strange to me about how, you know, you always hear like, oh, the internet is like this safe, wonderful space. And like now we, I found my people and that those stories exist. But there's just as many stories of someone being like, I think 5G is electromagnetically attacking my cat. And everyone be like, I agree, we should burn down the White House. And so like, there's, there's no default to that kind of network effect, right? Like, anything could happen.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:41Speaker 04

  So you don't think we should burn down the White House is what you're saying?

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Especially the way it's affecting your cat.

• 19:46Ryan Broderick?

  Exactly. I do not, any Secret Service agents that followed me in Granholm from DC, I do not, I do not think that. I love the White House. I think it's great that you had a wrestling match on, on, on the lawn. I think it's cool.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Goaded.

• 19:59Ryan Broderick?

  This is, this is a Q and A from Gang Stalking World, which is another old gang stalking hub. And yeah, are you familiar?

• 20:09Speaker 02

  I believe I have lurked here, yes.

• 20:11Ryan Broderick?

  So this is, this is a Q and A. So question, who gets targeted? Answer, anyone can be a target of gang stalking. However, the primary targets seem to be single women, minorities, outspoken individuals, whistleblowers, dissidents, homosexuals, et cetera. I thought this was interesting because I, like with QAnon, I have always sort of associated gang stalking paranoia with the right. And this is sort of interesting where like 20 years ago, whatever, that was the, it was the opposite.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  It was the opposite, yeah.

• 20:40Ryan Broderick?

  Are you, I mean, you are more of a lurker on these spaces than I am. Are you, are you like, do you have a sense of like when that shift happened?

• 20:48Speaker 02

  I sorted the subreddit by like hottest post of all time. You know how you can do that or like top post, whatever it was. And there was one from about like around Trump one, like around the Trump one administration, where the entire title was just they, in quotation marks, they are making me think gay thoughts again.

• 21:12Ryan Broderick?

  Awesome. Awesome. Ah, wow.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  I was like, okay.

• 21:17Speaker 04

  You just have to get that drained.

• 21:19Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 21:20Speaker 04

  The way you fight that is by getting that drained.

• 21:22Ryan Broderick?

  That's awesome.

• 21:23Speaker 04

  Environment like a bathhouse.

• 21:25Ryan Broderick?

  That's so awesome.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  Like a bathhouse or Tokyo Valentino.

• 21:29Ryan Broderick?

  Exactly.

• 21:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  That's a sex shop in Atlanta. I don't know if, I don't know if that references.

• 21:33Ryan Broderick?

  I, I assumed so. Oh, yeah.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, I mean, like, I think around the time that the paranoia of QAnon sets in is when this shifts. Because like, it does seem to be kind of targeting like softer, like sort of more like granola people before that.

• 21:54Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  You know how you see the terrible TikTok music now where it's like some white lady with dreads? And she's talking about how like, you're not supposed to drink tap water. Like, you know, those, you know what I'm talking about, like catatonic youths music, but.

• 22:09Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  I feel like it was more geared towards those people. And then around the time that pizza gate, QAnon, Epstein stuff starts, like it shifts to being a right wing paranoia thing. But I don't know, like, I kind of generally just associate this with libertarians.

• 22:30Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  I know a lot of them. I'm from Georgia. They kind of all think this, like, we have a lyric that references this story. But Matty, our guitar player, and I knew this guy who would, and I, I'm sorry if he's listening, if he doesn't want to be outed. He would buy a carton of cigarettes every week. And he would bury them in a PVC pipe underground and fill it with cement. Because he thought like government drones were like flying overhead to see what he had. He would also do it with weapons and stuff like that.

• 23:05Ryan Broderick?

  Why not just not buy the cigarettes? I don't.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  He thought they were going to be the currency in the apocalypse.

• 23:10Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, he was preserving the cigarettes for trade and barter. Oh, that makes all sense. Okay.

• 23:16Speaker 04

  That's a better bet than gold.

• 23:17Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I agree. I agree. And, and he was a horse masseuse.

• 23:23Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, alright.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Dude, I don't know, like, and he was just like, he was like, I've never voted in my life. Why would I ever vote for anybody? You're like, my vote doesn't, my doesn't, my vote doesn't fucking matter. Like, he was one of those people, you know what I mean? So like the paranoia, at least in the South, I've just always associated with people who like either don't vote or are just like anti-establishment or like just, you know, are those people that like fly POW flags, but like.

• 23:50Ryan Broderick?

  Yep. Or like the sovereign citizen guys that are like, my land is actually a country unto itself.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  I mean, that was 100% that guy. I'm pretty sure he's, he called his property sovereign land multiple.

• 23:59Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, hell yeah. Okay. I, I know, I know exactly the kind of guy we're talking about here. Yeah, no, that's awesome. I grew, I grew up near New Hampshire, so I'm very familiar with this kind of guy. This is, this makes sense. It also taps into something that I find very interesting about gang stalking, which is that the people accused of being gang stalkers are almost always people in lower income service jobs. There is a, there's a strange class dynamic to it that I, I find fascinating. So like in this Q and A, there's like, there's like a section on like, who is a gang stalker? And it lists almost every occupation in society. You can find people who are going along with this.

• 24:40Ryan Broderick?

  But then their examples are firemen, police officers, lawyers, healthcare workers, storekeepers, maids, janitors, cable installers, phone repair people, mail carriers, locksmiths, electricians. So it's, it's the people that sort of like make up society, like that you see.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  It's the people who have like theoretical ties behind the curtain. Does that make sense?

• 25:05Ryan Broderick?

  Yes, behind the veil of like society's structure. It's like the people who get, who keep it running, basically.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  They.

• 25:11Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. So, okay, I, I've talked about this on the show before. My dad is a, is a Trump supporter and he will, he will start to sort of spin out and talk about they. And he gets so mad at me when I'm like, who is they? Who are we talking about? And he's like, what are you, I was like, no, who, who is they? And in making someone try to define they will drive someone like this completely nuts because they, they can't.

• 25:34Speaker 04

  I just assumed that it was like the Secret Service were pretending to be locksmiths and janitors.

• 25:39Ryan Broderick?

  Could be.

• 25:40Speaker 04

  Is that, is that like a step, like, is that a faulty assumption?

• 25:43Speaker 02

  I have seen both schools of thought. These are people who are being paid to, apart from doing their normal job as a locksmith, they're being paid to just buy, buy someone else to like break into someone's house or like, for example, that, that guy that would post the ambulance like going around in his neighborhood. Yeah. That guy, like, I very distinctly remember him being like, there's two ways to think about this. Someone owns their own ambulance, which undeniably hilarious. Or two, someone, every shift at the hospital, someone gets paid a little bit extra to just do this to my house. So it's like, it's just like, I don't, I don't know, like.

• 26:24Ryan Broderick?

  In terms of the funding.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  It's just they, Grant. I wish I could give you more, man.

• 26:29Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it's very much in the eye of the beholder. And on this website, the, the Q and A lists the people funding it as large wealthy corporations who are doing it to keep their employees quiet or like using some way to sort of like keep people from talking about this. Government organizations. And then the third one, which I, I feel like has been totally dropped from sort of the, the gang stalking canon, is racist extremist groups. We, we've mentioned this on the show where it's like QAnon became this like magnet for every crazy thing on the internet and they all kind of glom together and, and.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  It ruined being a conspiracy theorist on the internet.

• 27:04Ryan Broderick?

  It really did.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  It was so much fun for a long time.

• 27:07Ryan Broderick?

  It was way more fun. I'm way, way more fun. Yeah, thank you for, yeah, I feel, I agree.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 27:14Speaker 04

  It's like a hobby. That's like the way I lost the UFC. I get it.

• 27:17Ryan Broderick?

  It is fun to be into conspiracies. Yeah, like I miss, I miss that stuff. I, I miss that.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  Bring back the old Alex Jones.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Do you remember when all of the Illuminati stuff got nuked off YouTube?

• 27:31Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, but it, it's like the party got ruined because it all got racist. And like, I was way more into reptilians when I thought they were just rich people that were like aliens secretly.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Absolutely. David Icke had to go ruin it for all of us by doing a conference about how it was actually a group of people.

• 27:47Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, well, we're gonna, we're gonna take a look at how to defend ourselves against gang stalkers. While you listen to a word from our sponsors, Saran Wrap. Saran Wrap, protect you from gang stalking. Wrap your body in Saran Wrap.

• 28:00Speaker 04

  Remember to poke holes.

• 28:01Ryan Broderick?

  Well, yeah, well, if you're dyed up, you don't need to.

• 28:05Speaker 04

  I meant for your mouth.

• 28:06Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, sure. Okay, I see.

• 28:07Speaker 04

  I meant breathe.

• 28:08Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, oh, I thought you meant to go to the bathroom.

• 28:10Speaker 04

  This isn't the auto erotic fixation podcast. This is the gang.

• 28:13Ryan Broderick?

  If you're dyed up, you, and you, look, if you type up and then you put yourself, then you put Saran Wrap on yourself, you'll be totally protected against gang stalking. They can't stop you.

• 28:24Speaker 04

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• 29:10Speaker 04

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• 29:37Ryan Broderick?

  What is really cool and great about America is that when enough crazy people get together and start talking about how crazy they are, the news shows up and interviews them about it. And that is exactly what happened here. So Webby Award for the mind control website happens, gang stalking starts to spread, and then we get our first big piece in the Washington Post in 2007 titled Mind Games, and the subhead is, "New on the Internet: A Community of People Who Believe the Government Is Beaming Voices Into Their Minds. They may be crazy, but the Pentagon has pursued a weapon that can do just that." And so this is related to gang stalking. We're still sort of in that proto period where like, they haven't settled on an idea yet.

• 30:20Ryan Broderick?

  But here's a part I'll read for you. "If Harlan Gerard is crazy, he doesn't act the part. He looks like a local businessman dressed for a casual Friday. Gerard's description of himself is matter of fact until he explains what's in the bag. Documents he believes prove that the government is attempting to control his mind. During the Saturday conference call, the subject of aluminum foil is deadly serious. While a few TIs targeted individuals realized an MIT study on tinfoil was a joke at their expense..." Oh yeah, we gotta talk about that in a second. "Some saw the findings as an explanation for why tinfoil didn't seem to stop the voices. Others vouched for the material." Do you know about the MIT tinfoil study?

• 31:01Speaker 02

  I feel like I've seen it referenced. I do want to point out that one of the biggest things that gets pointed out in all of these communities is the first line, is the first line that you just read, which is like, "This guy seems like a normal guy." In every single one of these, it's like, "It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what job you work. It can happen to you, and it will." Like, that's the point that every other TI wants to drive home is like, "I was a normal person before this happened to me, and you're a normal person, and it can also happen to you." I feel like that just gets driven home constantly in this community, but I don't know.

• 31:43Ryan Broderick?

  I think, I think that's right. I think it's probably like a decent recruiting tactic, too. Yeah. So in terms of the MIT thing, it's like a joke. Basically, like, MIT published like, a study titled "On the Effectiveness of Aluminum Foil Helmets" in 2005. And this is like another kind of common thing in these communities where it's like, making fun of them doesn't really work because, or like, satireizing them just sort of gets absorbed into the thing. And so that's sort of what happened here.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Being dabbed on, yeah.

• 32:15Ryan Broderick?

  And, you know, most importantly, for our purposes, the Washington Post story points out that like, 9/11 was like a really big moment for a lot of these people, which makes total sense, right? But yeah, I mean, you had mentioned MKUltra before this, and certain versions of gang stalking I've seen, you know, include the mind control, some don't. It's, you know, there's no real, like, shared text here. But like, do you feel like MKUltra still hangs over like, large chunks of the internet that you're on? Like, is it, is it for boomers? Or is it like, do you feel like it's still very prevalent for people?

• 32:52Speaker 02

  Do you mean in a sense of like, the actual government operation of MKUltra still hangs over, or like?

• 32:58Ryan Broderick?

  Or like, the idea of it, right?

• 33:00Speaker 02

  The idea of it?

• 33:01Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  So like, when I'm trying to talk to somebody about like, that kind of thing, and trying to be like, you know, Ted Kaczynski was a part of MKUltra, did you know this? Like, how I did to every, how I did to every girl in my twenties who dated me, unfortunately. I feel like the spirit of like, talking about it, and like, let's be honest, having fun talking about it, and like, because it is like, kind of a fun thing. Like, it's a bummer and depressing, and like, you know, I don't want to think about, you know, the government swirling their finger in my brain, but like, it is fun to talk about if you're like, talking

• 33:40Speaker 02

  to somebody in the know, you know? I feel like it looms over, in that sense, more than anything. Like, I feel like it's more fun to talk about than anything, whereas like, you know, if you get a bunch of people on the internet talking about Oklahoma City, like, it's gonna get really, really depressing really quick, or like, you know, or any of the like, school shooting stuff, like, it's like, so I feel like MKUltra is like, kind of the only fun thing that you can talk about in these circles anymore, which sucks, because like I said, I mean, QAnon like, just nuked all of it. Like, it became, it, once QAnon

• 34:21Speaker 02

  was like, "Oh, it's tied to everything. Every conspiracy is, is wrapped up in this fucking fake thing that a guy from 4chan created." It like, kind of ruined it, but like, this does have traces of it, where it's like, it's still, people are being messed with by them, whoever they is. They are messing with me. But it's also less real. Like, there's so little proof with the gang stalking thing, which is like, probably why I'm so fascinated with it is, I don't know how it sticks the same way that something like MKUltra does. Because the only way MKUltra sticks is like, we know that it was a real operation, we

• 35:02Speaker 02

  know that they did similar things like that, where they would just like, drug random people. But when I say "they," I'm talking about the CIA. I'm not just talking about "they."

• 35:10Ryan Broderick?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Whereas like, this, like, no one has any explanation as to who is actually behind it. No one has any explanation as to why you get targeted. It's not even a meme anymore. Or like, it's like, it, it hasn't graduated to just being like, a meme of like, "Oh, haha, I'm being gang stalked." Like, it's like, there's still people who think they're being gang stalked, you know?

• 35:32Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  It's like, I don't know.

• 35:35Ryan Broderick?

  The QAnon, the Q, yeah, the QAnon aspect of it is also kind of interesting to think about now, because like, you know, QAnon is like, one of these, right? It does this, and then it's massive. You know, it probably peaks around January, you know, 6th, let's say, and then it starts to kind of go away.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Some arbitrary day.

• 35:54Ryan Broderick?

  January 6th, 2021, let's say, and then it kind of dies out. And it has, I think, like, look, like, Grant and I were just at like, a massive gathering of these people. There was not even a giant Q American flag, no Q stuff, nothing. It's, it's all gone. And it is strange. And I've also noticed, I kind of miss it now. It's a little retro. I'm kind of into it. But like, I have noticed that a bunch of the stuff that got sucked into QAnon are all breaking apart, and I'm seeing them individually for the first time. I came across a like, truly horrendous, awful gang stalking account on X the other day,

• 36:35Ryan Broderick?

  that is like, going very viral in certain right-wing circles. Yeah. It's awful. It's, it's a gang stalking.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Awful in what sense?

• 36:46Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, so.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  I'm sorry. I have to know. It's my morbid curiosity, man. I'm.

• 36:52Ryan Broderick?

  No, I know. So like.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  I can tell that this is something that Ryan walked into this episode being like, "I'm not going to talk about this." And this is the moment where now he's, he's gonna dig it up. Yeah.

• 37:01Ryan Broderick?

  It's, no, it's really bad. It's, I can't, oh, and maybe it got deleted. That would be so great if it got deleted. I couldn't tell if it was a bit, or if it was like, like an edgelord, just like, trying to be as offensive as possible, or if like, this person was like, seriously mentally ill. But he was like, or both. But he was again, it was, and his account claiming that someone was being gang stalked by like, special needs people. And, and it was one of those things where I came across on the internet, and I was like, "I don't, I don't want to put in the time to understand what's happening here." But, but I mainly noted it because I was like, I hadn't seen like, authentic gang stalking content in the wild like that since QAnon. Like, it is coming, like, these pieces are coming back in weird ways.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  I mean, the other piece is with, you know, how fragmented the like, right-wing conspiracy theorists have been after the Epstein files and stuff like that. I'm sure of that. Yeah. Good night. I, wow, I was not prepared for you to say that.

• 37:57Ryan Broderick?

  It's, it's one of those ones where like, I was like, "Oh, okay, like, I've had enough internet today. I'm gonna go outside and walk around."

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:03Ryan Broderick?

  We are talking about a community of people who like, needs serious help here, right? And they, and their beliefs are bizarre and strange. And in, in this proto period that we've been talking about today, of like, leading up to the concept of gang stalking becoming popular, The New York Times actually did a story about this in 2008. This would have been like, a year after the Washington Post one about mind control and gang stalking. And it's titled, "Sharing Their Demons on the Web." And it's a little more responsible. Then the other one. And it reads, although many internet groups that offer peer support are considered helpful to the mentally ill, some experts say websites that amplify reports of mind control and group stalking represent a dark side of social networking. And that's the only one I can think of. I think that's the only dark thing about social networking. And then there's a quote from a doctor here.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Listen, no A, man.

• 38:50Ryan Broderick?

  I, one of my favorite things about this show is like, reading the really old, like, some say they'll have 10 websites on Google soon, you know, like, I love it.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  The Obama era optimism where it was like, yeah, Facebook's gonna bring us all together again.

• 39:05Ryan Broderick?

  Exactly. It's gonna make everything fine. History's over. So there's a doctor that's quoted here that says, the views of these belief systems are like a shark that has to be constantly fed. If you don't feed the delusion, sooner or later, it will die out or diminish on its own accord. The key thing is that it needs to be repetitively reinforced. You, you share my sort of love of like fringe conspiracy theories. Did you ever have like a moment where you like really fell for one and it just sort of turned off for you one day?

• 39:31Speaker 02

  There were a couple where just like, the, the heart machine one was like, big for me in high school.

• 39:38Ryan Broderick?

  What's the heart machine one?

• 39:39Speaker 02

  Oh, oh, I, I get to tell you about this. It was a machine that was like verifiably real in, I think, Alaska, or maybe like Antarctica that could supposedly control the weather. And the piece of evidence that someone used was, I think, Top Gear went to it and it, the machine created a cloud that rained on one of the Top Gear guys. One day, you know, we're gonna be able, able to make a cloud that's like, so big that, you know, it can cover a whole state or whatever. And like, I remember there being people who are just like, well, you gotta think, like, they got, like, this is the type of technology that

• 40:23Speaker 02

  they're showing us. Like, they're allowing TV shows to go here. What are they not showing us? And then, there was a solid year in high school where I was like, you know, if it was hailing on me, I'm like, they're doing this to me specifically. They don't want me to make it to, they don't want me to make it to band practice on time.

• 40:38Ryan Broderick?

  Wait, did you say, did you say hail machine or harp machine?

• 40:42Speaker 02

  Harp machine.

• 40:43Ryan Broderick?

  Harp machine, harp machine. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, that conspiracy theory is like being passed around right now where a bunch of Iranian propaganda accounts are claiming that Israel's weather manipulation machines have been knocked out. And there's all these people in Iran sharing videos of like rainfall that has like not happened in a decade or whatever. And so like that, and we, yeah, that's a big one. That comes back, you know, all the time.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  You guys did the weather conspiracy episode with Will. And I was like, I was having so much fun with that because I think I fell for all of those when I was younger.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Maybe not all, maybe not the racist ones, but.

• 41:23Ryan Broderick?

  Sure. No, no, no, no, the, the, the good ones. Um, I, I think I've shared this story before, but I, I really fell for ancient aliens. I was in college, smoking a lot of weed at that stinky house that was being haunted by a broken ice cream machine. And I was watching a lot of History Channel. And I like went really far down an ancient aliens rabbit hole and started like really getting creeped out. And then I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. And then I forgot about it. And like, I went back to normal. Like, I, it just like turned off, basically.

• 41:51Speaker 04

  Like the doctor said.

• 41:52Ryan Broderick?

  Like the doctor said, exactly.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  That, I think that might be my problem is that I don't think it ever really turned off for me. I think that might, that might be my issue is that like, in the back of my mind, I'm like, yeah, none of this shit's real. But like, you know, there's at least 10 minutes a day where I'm like, well, what if it's all real?

• 42:08Ryan Broderick?

  I think it's okay to have a couple of conspiracy theories that you believe if they're harmless. Like, I am, I'm pretty big into aliens. Like, I think aliens are real. I don't think ghosts are real, but I think aliens are real. Um.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 42:20Ryan Broderick?

  I also think that like our government right now is more insane than it's ever been. And like when Grant and I came back from Minneapolis in January, I was like telling Grant, like, hey, like, we should be really careful at the airport. And I was like, I think I'm being really paranoid, but like, we could be on some kind of list. And then like, a couple of days later, a bunch of journalists were stopped at the airport and they were arrested and detained. I don't think it's totally nuts to be paranoid right now. And, and I think like, in a super corrupt political environment, you know, there's a lot of people who believe like, oh, I'm a Trump supporter, so I don't need to be scared. And it's like, no, we're in like an oligarchy now where like, if you piss, piss up, if you piss off the rich guy in your town, he might have the cops follow you around for a week.

• 43:03Ryan Broderick?

  And it doesn't matter what your political beliefs are, because like, everyone just wants to sort of harass and terrorize each other. Like, I don't think that's crazy to say.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  No, I mean, like, if I actually believed it, I think I would maybe be going to larger lengths to like, prepare for some sort of, if, prepare for some, something like that. But like, I'm, I'm not prepared at all. Like, I have no idea what I'd do if the police followed me around for a week. I do have a more fun conspiracy theory that might be original.

• 43:32Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, cool.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  I think just construction in general, it is like a giant conspiracy. Like, I just think like, especially, I live in Atlanta and like, everything is always under construction. Like, for years and years and years, I've just been like, this is just a gigantic money laundering scheme. The same money being passed around the same five construction companies. Everything always being under construction, nothing ever working.

• 44:00Ryan Broderick?

  I can't prove that that's totally true. But what I can say is I have a friend who has been working in, like, as an AI developer for a large construction company for many years now. And he's like, this doesn't work. They don't seem to care that it doesn't work. There's a ton of money going into it. And he's like, I can't understand. He's like, it doesn't work. And no one seems to care. And he's sort of losing his mind, you know, over the last few years, dealing with this. So it's possible that like, construction companies aren't real.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  You're gonna make me put on some tinfoil, Ryan.

• 44:34Ryan Broderick?

  I just.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  I'm worried about how I leave this.

• 44:36Speaker 04

  What does it work like the AI, like, like, the thing that they have him build?

• 44:40Ryan Broderick?

  Well, like, they can't tell, they can't explain like what they, they're just like, we need AI. And he's like, but you're a construction company. Like, what do you do? Like, it just doesn't work. Like, like, so our mayor in New York right now, Zora and Mamdammi is trying to get them to take down all of the like, construction scaffolding, because it's, some of it's been up for like, 20 years for no reason. So, maybe it's all gotta come down. Maybe we gotta like, we gotta really, you said something I want to go back to before, before we go to the break. You said something that.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Sorry, yeah.

• 45:11Ryan Broderick?

  No, no, you said something very important. And I want to hit this before we go to the break, because I think it needs to enter the sort of like, lexicon of the show, which is you described, I've never heard it described this way. And I think it's amazing. You're like, you sort of described falling for a conspiracy theory as, as a two-step process, which is like, one, you like, learn about it. And then the term you use was, number two, you prepare. Yet I think, I think the moment that you, the moment that you have absorbed so much insane bullshit, that you're like, I've got to get prepared for this thing that is not real, that I've like, I've just, I've decided is real. That is the danger moment. And I think like, the prepare moment is when things have gone off the rails completely.

• 45:53Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. That's huge. That's, that's, that's like genuinely a novel observation that I think is like, awesome. That rocks. I love that. I am gonna get prepared for our sponsors. But we'll be right back in just a second. Uh, this next, uh, uh, this next sponsor, wait, this next ad is from the band Falling in Reverse.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  God.

• 46:19Ryan Broderick?

  Dance Gavin Dance.

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• 48:14Ryan Broderick?

  Actually, the closest I ever came to dying in a mosh pit was at a Chiod's concert in a little venue in Boston, uh, cause I, I hit the ground and then no one wanted to help me. And I was like 14 or 15 and yeah.

• 48:25Speaker 04

  Do you think that they were all out to get you?

• 48:26Ryan Broderick?

  All right. So most of our episode has been about sort of like how gang stalking appeared, right? It started in mind control, uh, communities that it sort of like spiraled out in a million different directions and it will eventually get absorbed by QAnon. But in 2011, gang stalking really sort of becomes its own thing. Up until this point, it has always been kind of part and parcel with mind control. Now it is the, it, now it's its own thing on Facebook. Uh, there are gang stalking Facebook groups that are created in 2011. This is from the Facebook, uh, group, uh, titled the destruction of society, gang stalking. And the top post right now is someone claiming that a St. John's Wort supplement will increase the activity of a liver enzyme,

• 49:11Ryan Broderick?

  which helps break down ivermectin.

• 49:15Speaker 02

  Man, how the mighty fall.

• 49:18Ryan Broderick?

  I know. Yeah. I bet, I bet COVID was great for these people because there's no one around.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  No one could, no one could come get them.

• 49:25Ryan Broderick?

  Maybe that's what happened. What if like, what if like, okay, wait, hold on. I have a, I have, I have a theory of gang stalking. What if, okay, there's a bunch of paranoid people in the nineties and that's just happening. Like, like X-Files is tapping into this. Like, America's just very paranoid. A lot's, you know, it's post-Cold War paranoia, Cold War paranoia. Internet turns on, people start finding each other on the internet and they start communicating, they start networking. And then QAnon arrives about a decade later and it takes all the crazy shit and it makes it into one thing that everyone can get behind. And then the Republicans sort of throw their weight in front of that. But then the gang stalkers or the, they're the targeted individuals, they start

• 50:08Ryan Broderick?

  be accidentally becoming deprogrammed when COVID hits because they're no longer outside. And now like, there's a whole sort of section of people who just like, aren't into gang stalking anymore.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  And you think that's when the, that's where the falloff begins?

• 50:23Ryan Broderick?

  I, I

• 50:23Speaker 02

  For lack of a better term?

• 50:24Ryan Broderick?

  I would guess, yeah, I would guess that.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Did the gang stalking mindset not just get replaced with like COVID conspiracy mindset though?

• 50:32Ryan Broderick?

  Probably, yeah.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  You know, supposedly it can happen to anybody. So maybe there's a bunch of really smart people who just disconnected entirely. But like, I have a friend from church when I, from high school who like, doesn't not think he's being gang stalked, but like, lives in North Georgia and like, stockpiles weapons and like, he talks to me every six months and he's like, you know, you really shouldn't be going to Europe. And then I'm like, all right, cool.

• 50:58Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  He's like, he's like, you're really close to Russia right now. You know that? He's one of those guys.

• 51:04Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, not bad advice, honestly, with the Russia stuff.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  No, but I'm in Hungary, playing a show in Budapest, so I'm fine.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  When I see him like fall out of like one mindset, I see him replace it with another. And I've known him for fucking 15 years. So like, but I can't help but think like, someone who is really into this stuff and really believes that they are being targeted or someone they know is being targeted, or even at the very least that like, this shit is real. I can't help but think something else just kind of took its place. You know what I mean? Even if COVID killed it.

• 51:44Ryan Broderick?

  In our research, we came across someone who believed in Morgellons disease, which is something we've done an episode on where it's like this belief that you have like fibers under your skin.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 51:54Ryan Broderick?

  And, and they jumped from basic gang stalking to that.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  I was hoping it would be not that bad, but that is, that's rough.

• 52:02Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. I don't think there's a huge amount of falloff. Um, that said, we do have one example of someone, we, we do have one example of someone trying to medicate themselves out of the gang stalking delusion, um, which is kind of fascinating, very bleak, but very fascinating. So they wrote, I'm taking antipsychotics, good stuff. It saves my day. It regulates the dopamine in your brain, which makes all that stuff. Everything stopped for me after four weeks of medication, but not a hundred percent. They do mention that they're still having like an electromagnetic feeling. And if they think too hard about it, they will start to feel like they're being gang stalked again. Uh, and then they say, most important was that I know about my illness and how it works. Hope it helps some of you guys. And then we have two comments, uh,

• 52:46Ryan Broderick?

  under here. So one says, awesome. Reading over your post history, you were pretty deep into the mental illness. It must have taken great strength and self-awareness to pull yourself out of it enough to choose to seek help. I'm so pleased you did that and are feeling better. Good.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:01Ryan Broderick?

  Second comment, although I'm not sure of the authenticity of your post, I'm glad you fixed your problem. This doesn't apply to everyone though, as organized stalking is a real tactic used in today's society. And there are many that have attested to being trained in organized stalking. I myself was attempted to be coerced into joining in a few times after being conditioned.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  That person believes that this is not some doctor trying to tell everybody to be on antipsychotics. They believe that this person is being, for lack of a better word, like sedated.

• 53:31Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  By this medication. And he's like, he's like, that's great. Awesome. Sounds like it's working for you. However.

• 53:39Ryan Broderick?

  However, great for you, but not works in every case. Yeah.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:43Ryan Broderick?

  And then unfortunately

• 53:44Speaker 02

  Specifically me.

• 53:45Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, me. I, because all, well, the, the one detail from that was like, they have approached me. I think there's a lot of people that are like, and I imagine that's probably a similar delusion where you think that someone's talking to you in code about you becoming a, a, a gang stalker.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  I knew a guy who thought, uh, that the government was sending him, uh, secret messages, uh, through Morse code in the subway.

• 54:09Ryan Broderick?

  Which subway? New York subway?

• 54:11Speaker 02

  He thought like the rattling of the train tracks were like Morse code.

• 54:15Ryan Broderick?

  No, cause the reason I ask is because you know, James Murphy from LCA Sound System made the newer sound packages for the MTA. So maybe, maybe there is something to that.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 54:25Ryan Broderick?

  That, that, wait, that did happen, right? I didn't just hallucinate that.

• 54:28Speaker 04

  Who did he steal those sounds from?

• 54:30Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, stop that.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  Whoa, nice. Is this like when Brian, is this like when Brian Eno made the Windows startup sound?

• 54:37Ryan Broderick?

  Which apparently broke his brain for like permanently. He, he said that working in microseconds, like actually like permanently altered the way he thinks about music.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  I was just talking about this, how he like, he was listening to something that he made for like eight seconds and he said it would feel like an hour.

• 54:50Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 54:51Speaker 02

  I've thought about doing that to my own brain before, just to see if it's real, but like, you know, probably a really terrible idea.

• 54:59Ryan Broderick?

  I think so.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  For someone who makes their money off of playing longer songs.

• 55:03Ryan Broderick?

  I have to correct myself. James Murphy wanted to create a soundscape for the MTA, but it didn't happen because it was, uh, because it was unsafe.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Talking to you or James Murphy talking?

• 55:15Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, James Murphy. James Murphy is sending thoughts into my brain via the MTA. Um, I, I, I have to buy as many American apparel hoodies as possible right now because James Murphy's sending me psychic messages to the MTA. Um, so one last very dark piece here is that, uh, by our estimate, there are about five mass shootings since 2013 done by people who think they're targeted individuals.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  This I did not know.

• 55:44Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. I wanted to, I wanted to lead into that with a funny James Murphy riff first. Um, so

• 55:51Speaker 04

  All of them were listening to, uh, New York. You're bringing me down.

• 55:54Ryan Broderick?

  Daft Punk is following me around. Uh, yeah.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  Yo.

• 55:59Ryan Broderick?

  So, uh, Dr. Lorraine Murphy, Dr. Dr. Lorraine Sheridan was interviewed, uh, by the New York Times in 2016, uh, a co-author on basically the only study that exists about gang stalking, which I think is interesting. And she told the Times, what's scary for me is that there are no counter sites that try and convince targeted individuals that they are delusional. They end up in a closed ideology echo chamber, which I don't think is actually an exclusive problem, uh, problem, uh, for gang stalking. Like, that's sort of just like actually the core problem of like our entire modern life, I think in a lot of ways. Um, in fact,

• 56:37Speaker 02

  And this was 2013 that she wrote this?

• 56:40Ryan Broderick?

  The, the first shooting was in 2013, but she wrote this in 2016. Yeah. The estimate in 2016 for, so they, they tried to figure out how many people believe they're targeted individuals. And the estimate in 2016 was about 10,000 people, which is not that many. I think, I think the government could step up their game and start following a lot more people.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Think of how many police officers and firefighters there are. We

• 57:04Ryan Broderick?

  What are they doing? What are they doing all day? Just follow somebody around. Yeah. I, I also think you could kind of take everything we've talked about on today's episode and just sort of remove the proper nouns and plug in any other internet like conspiracy. And it's sort of is true. Like, like in a lot of ways, gang stalking is kind of the most pervasive because it's, it's impossible to prove a negative, right? Like, it's impossible. If you believe that the government is capable of following you around all day and lying about it, there is nothing that will ever satisfy you if you continue to believe that.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  I agree with that. Do you think it's interesting that this is like the one conspiracy that hasn't really had its like Joe Rogan experience moment?

• 57:46Speaker 04

  Has Joe Rogan never talked about gang stalking?

• 57:48Speaker 02

  I, I couldn't find anything. If he has, it's maybe been to like discredit it or something like that. But I find it interesting that like, you said you could plug in any conspiracy theory and like, you're mostly right about that. I'd say it's just like, there is something weird about how like, this has never been presented as like, like fun, fun podcast banter ever. Like, and I, I do find that, I do find that to be a little, a little weird.

• 58:20Ryan Broderick?

  I think you're right. Um, I just was curious and I was like, oh, you know, what, you know, has he ever appeared? And I Googled it and

• 58:34Ryan Broderick?

  There is a post about Joe Rogan on the gang stalking subreddit from four years ago. And it's just titled Joe Rogan, and it says, we need to get Steve Beckman on Joe Rogan's podcast. He knows a lot and is well spoken. The American people need to wake up on what's going on. And it links to a site that is no longer available for something called Co-Intel Pro 2.0. Do you know what I'm talking? Do you know what this is?

• 58:56Speaker 02

  No, I have no idea. But like, that's, that's exactly right, though, is like, he's, he's had like, him and other podcast people have had like, you know, alien people on ancient civilization, people on and like, you know, fucking DMT people on and, you know, like, I feel like it's all like, you know, that's all fun and games and stuff like that. And there's something about this that is just like, a little too, maybe a little too close to home even. And like, I don't know. Or maybe there's no expert on it, you know, maybe there's no real expert on it whatsoever. But I assume there's like conferences and shit like that, just like there is for Flat Earth and whatnot.

• 59:35Ryan Broderick?

  I think, no, I think the answer is pretty clear, which is that Joe Rogan is friends with Trump, and Trump won't let him tell the secrets about what's happening in the gang stalking community.

• 59:44Speaker 02

  Of course, of course. See, that's if I wasn't, if I wasn't with you two, that's where my brain would go.

• 59:52Ryan Broderick?

  I just did a little bit of digging. It seems like this guy, Steve Beckman, was trying to become like, a mouthpiece for the gang stalking community, created a podcast called Co-Intel Pro 2.0. And it's all about gang stalking. It sort of like, didn't work, it seems like. Fascinating.

• 1:00:14Speaker 02

  If I got us off topic, my bad.

• 1:00:16Ryan Broderick?

  No, no, no, no, this is great. I think you're right that it is strange that like, this hasn't really, and it could be that like, the term gang stalking and the sort of like, the, the lack of like, structure around it, makes it unuseful to right wing causes. Like, you kind of have to create a more specific version of they, in a way. It's a tactic, not a topic. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  It's not necessarily class or race based too. So like, it's, it's more, well, I guess it might be class based a little bit, but like, it's more so just anti, anti-government than like, it's, it's they, it's a general they. So it's not as, uh, it's not as easy to peddle to people.

• 1:01:01Ryan Broderick?

  Most of the times I see it now is like, people on YouTube, just like posting like videos to 10 people being like, this person's following me, right? And like, that's, I think that's really where, where it has ended up. Um, I guess like, you know, to wrap things up here, like, if you were being gang stalked by some sort of malevolent entity, like, who do you think would be doing that? Do you think it would be the government, a private corporation, our hardcore?

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  Lamb goat.

• 1:01:28Ryan Broderick?

  Lamb goat?

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, R slash metalcore.

• 1:01:30Ryan Broderick?

  Or who would you want to be gang stalked by? Like, I would want to be gang stalked by the government, personally. Or, or a big corporation like Disney, or something like a big one.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  I emailed Grant about this. Did you do any research into Isaac Brock from Modest Mouse being gang stalked?

• 1:01:46Ryan Broderick?

  We did. Yeah.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  Okay. Whoever's gang stalking Isaac Brock, also me, please.

• 1:01:53Speaker 04

  His symptoms seemed to subside, so I just didn't like, it seemed to be, it seemed to have been a, a time in his life. So I just, I didn't want to include it if he seemed to be like, doing better.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  That's awesome. I love, I love Modest Mouse. I love him. I, I, I hope he's doing better. The, the other example of like, celebrity who's being gang stalked that I found was Randy Quaid.

• 1:02:16Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, that's a big one. That's.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he just thinks he's being like, gang stalked by like, Hollywood, like, higher ups, like, executive behind the executive, behind the executive type of thing. If I had to choose on which targeted individual to be, I guess I would just choose Randy Quaid because he seems to be just avoiding taxes in Canada. He claimed asylum and they gave it.

• 1:02:43Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, that's worse places to end up for sure.

• 1:02:46Speaker 04

  I just have one, one theory that we haven't touched on. You know how there's a saying that like, flying saucer, early days, this got reported, but it gets muddled with something that somebody saw on TV, and then that becomes sort of the story. And then people just like, start reporting what they see in stories. I feel like this is, like, there's people who have schizotypal or like, paranoid delusions, and it just kind of picks up cultural ephemna, whatever that word is. And ephemera. And so like, your brain works that way. And then like, what's in the air at this time is like, people are following you. And then that's like, how it just takes shape. And I think

• 1:03:28Speaker 04

  that can like, like, that's malleable by culture, but not the like, the like, sense that your brain's gonna do that. That's my, that's my theory on like, the, the sort of like, rise of this is like, these just would have been UFO people in a different time span, or like, it might overlap.

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  Or like, the, the people who are like, not only UFO people, but like, UFO abduction people.

• 1:03:51Ryan Broderick?

  Yes.

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. No, that's, that's like, more the same, like, two, two sides of the same coin. Yeah, for sure.

• 1:03:59Ryan Broderick?

  I, Adam, Adam Curtis, the documentarian I mentioned earlier, he has a whole riff on this where it's like, conspiracy theories sort of mirror technological trends and sort of anxiety around this. And so his example is like, drone technology is getting better in the 90s. We see a resurgence of like, Roswell, New Mexico stuff, and you know, like, X-Files and all the rest. There's an argument, you know, to made that in that same way, mind control fears spreading on the internet at the height of like, wireless internet becoming possible. And, you know, the surveillance state and, you know, the enemy of the state, the Will Smith movie, and like, the, you know, all of that, the NSA, you know, post 9/11 paranoia, makes total sense to me that like, mind control, gang stalking,

• 1:04:42Ryan Broderick?

  basically appears online like, a year after. Like, that makes total sense to me. So I'm gonna just say this, like, I, I am so happy you came on. This is so great. I could talk to you for hours. If, how is tour going? How, how are things, you know, in the, the heavy music world these days? Like, how, how has it all been?

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  My band is, is, is great. Um, not in like, a musical sense. We're, I mean, we do make cool music, but like, um, we're, we're doing well. It's cool. Um, I, I don't know how recession, uh, being in a recession has not affected metalcore merch sales. Pretty stoked on that.

• 1:05:25Ryan Broderick?

  It didn't the last time around either, actually. Like, Metalcore had a really good time during the last recession too, so that makes sense.

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  So, uh, that's cool.

• 1:05:32Ryan Broderick?

  My opening question, but we got sidetracked, was I was gonna ask you, you know, like, do you defend, I think it's the third Fear Before the March of Flames album, when they, they switched up their sound drastically, to get odd how people shake, I believe, or open mouth?

• 1:05:47Speaker 02

  Always open mouth?

• 1:05:48Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. Do you like, do you fuck with that one?

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Not only do I fuck with that one, I think the album after it is their best one.

• 1:05:54Ryan Broderick?

  I went back actually for this episode, and just started listening to Fear Before the March of Flames. And I hadn't listened to it in a while. I was surprised how much I, at the time, I wanted, you know, I wanted art damage. I wanted, you know, I wanted like, sasscore stuff. And then, now I'm like, I wasn't ready for it. I love open mouth now. And I love Fear Before.

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  It's so awesome. 10 years ago, when we were saying that we sounded like that, it was not cool. Like, people did not think it was awesome. They, they were like, shut up, we don't know what that is. And, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't know, like, that kind of thing seems to be having a moment right now with like, Knocked Loose and Bring Me the Horizon and, you know, uh, you know, those kinds of bands being like, festival headliners and stuff. So I don't know how long that's gonna last. And I don't know if that affects us really, because we're kind of a working class. And, you know, we don't plan on stopping or trend hopping or anything like that. But if, I hope that answers your question of how is it going?

• 1:06:52Ryan Broderick?

  I kind of blame Hyperpop for sort of like, reactivating like, a, a DNA sequence that was buried in the internet. And then now everyone's like, oh, he's like, find my people and find my thing I like. And, you know, as a fan of that music from the first time around, like, it's great to have new bands like, making stuff that sounds like, you know, Fear Before the March of Flames or whatever. And like, that, it's exciting. Also, like.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  I cannot get that band to reunite for shit, by the way.

• 1:07:16Ryan Broderick?

  They seem like very miserable people. Like, they seem like very tricky people to deal with. Oh, uh, before we sign off, I do want to also say that you had one of the funniest viral mosh pit calls I have ever seen in my life. You've had two. One, obviously is starting a breakdown with the Family Guy theme song, which is incredible. And then there was one where you were on a UK tour, I believe, and you were like, prove to me, yeah.

• 1:07:47Speaker 02

  Show me how free your healthcare is. Yeah.

• 1:07:49Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, right before we beat the absolute shit out of each other. As dark of an episode as this has been, and this has been a real joy and a real fan and great.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  Thank you so much.

• 1:07:57Ryan Broderick?

  So, Carson, if people want to follow you on the internet, where can they do that?

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  Um, I use Twitter the most, or X, I suppose. Um, uh, it's just Carson Dowboys. Um, and then I think my Instagram is Carson from Dowboys.

• 1:08:18Speaker 06

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