Speaker 1: Podcast, Thank you. That is it is, It's true. It's true.
Speaker 1: Actually it could happen here listening to the podcast. That
Speaker 1: is more or less the truth we have. We have
Speaker 1: Dreg Robert out of bed at before their crack of
Speaker 1: dawg at a legend forty two am. Um, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about actually something very fun. I've been I've
Speaker 1: been wanting to talk about this for a long time
Speaker 1: because this is one of actually one of my favorite things.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, yeah, So I'm gonna I'm gonna tell a
Speaker 1: bit of a bit of a little story regarding one
Speaker 1: of my act all time favorite events and topics. So
Speaker 1: back in like, there was this a cheesy little online
Speaker 1: university sign show made by the Rochester Institute of Technology
Speaker 1: called can You Imagine um. The The idea was to
Speaker 1: highlight some of the cool and weird things at the
Speaker 1: university UM in part to promote the Imagine r i
Speaker 1: T Festival, which was like the school's annual like innovation
Speaker 1: and creativity festivals think that they put on. So yeah, today,
Speaker 1: I want to talk specifically about episode three of the
Speaker 1: web series because the contents of which overlap with some
Speaker 1: of my like artistic interests. UM and like just my
Speaker 1: love of illusions and paradox and I will kind of
Speaker 1: tie into some topics we are we always discussed in
Speaker 1: the show. So yeah, episode three one of probably probably
Speaker 1: the most interesting episode UM. Episode three opens with the
Speaker 1: hosts Kevin and Steph as they like stand awkwardly in
Speaker 1: a gloriously dated, you like university film set, like it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's only twenties, it's only twenty thirteen, but
Speaker 1: it was like obviously like made in the nineties, like
Speaker 1: like like like the set's like it's it's all it's
Speaker 1: it's all very dated. What specific Oh, like they're they're
Speaker 1: like they're just like weird, like like weird, like like
Speaker 1: dadd science stuff on the walls. All the hosts of
Speaker 1: wearing like dorky orange T shirts like like over to
Speaker 1: over top of their regular clothes. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's all. It's all that kind of it's all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So like dorkey orange T shirts with
Speaker 1: the letters r I T for Roger CRUs Sister Institute
Speaker 1: of Technology UM. Of course, because everything in this online
Speaker 1: video series is perfect. Kevin is wearing his shirt over
Speaker 1: top of like a button down it's it's, it's, it's great. Um.
Speaker 1: The first fifty seconds of the video are taken up
Speaker 1: with like plugging the upcoming r A T Imagine Festival
Speaker 1: with a with a co host Steph beautifully stumbling over
Speaker 1: her lines when she says the events catchphrase, it's where
Speaker 1: the left brain and the right brain collide. And it's great.
Speaker 1: It's it's, it's, it's, it's it's perfect. So after all
Speaker 1: the plugs and the vamping, the hosts get down to
Speaker 1: the fun engineer ring feet and they'll be showing us today,
Speaker 1: which is a neat little architectural experiment a part of
Speaker 1: the r I T campus called the A Sharing and
Speaker 1: Stairwell UM, of course, named after the impossible staircases depicted
Speaker 1: in Dutch artist mc Escher's artwork. So the video cuts
Speaker 1: two from the little like sound stage they're filming in
Speaker 1: to this boring, white, seemingly typical stairwell. Our host Kevin
Speaker 1: ascending a flight of the gray concrete stairs. UM explains
Speaker 1: that what located in Building seven of the campus. The
Speaker 1: stairwell was designed by Filipino architect Raphael Nelson Avagando and
Speaker 1: was one of the first structures put up when our
Speaker 1: I T moved their campus from downtown Rochester to the
Speaker 1: more suburban Henrietta. UM when when he's taking when he's
Speaker 1: reaching the top of the stairs, he turns the quarter
Speaker 1: and then suddenly seems to appear at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the lower flight of stairs, leading up to the landing
Speaker 1: that he just left from, all while continuing to talk
Speaker 1: about the architect behind this like kind of weird impossible
Speaker 1: feat um. So, as Kevin walks back up the camera,
Speaker 1: he says that the stairwell was built in the eight
Speaker 1: and it's been wowing r I two students ever since. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it is very cool. It's like it's like you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: like you get you get the little like like you
Speaker 1: get the little architectural trick that they're doing. Um, but
Speaker 1: it's it is it is still pretty fun to see.
Speaker 1: Before episode three of Can You Imagine aired you Can
Speaker 1: you can already find a few articles on the school's
Speaker 1: UH website about the issuing stairwell, along with some like
Speaker 1: forum posts debating how the architecture in the stairwell works
Speaker 1: to like achieve the effect. Um Also floating around on
Speaker 1: YouTube was like a random segment of what looked like
Speaker 1: a like a PBS style late nineties documentary about the
Speaker 1: physics and architecture of the school and specifically the stairwell
Speaker 1: that interviewed some like professors um and some like architects
Speaker 1: and like a symphysicist kind of discussing what like how
Speaker 1: to like bring paradox into the physical world. Yeah but
Speaker 1: but but but around the time and the can You
Speaker 1: Imagine episode aired now, like infamous r RT stairwell was
Speaker 1: mostly unknown, so like even despite it being very interesting,
Speaker 1: no one really knew about it until this episode of
Speaker 1: this little web series air Um. The little web episode
Speaker 1: dedicates around half its time to interview students, uh and
Speaker 1: righteously random people at the university about if they even
Speaker 1: know about the stairwell's existence um, and if they do,
Speaker 1: what like experiences they have with like messing around with
Speaker 1: like the looping architecture, because yeah, you can, you can
Speaker 1: you know, you can play a lot of games with
Speaker 1: this type of with this type of design. Uh. So
Speaker 1: the rest of the short video like tries to demonstrate
Speaker 1: the disorienting ascent down and descent back up via the
Speaker 1: camera in various ways, like you know, like human chains
Speaker 1: or holding hands around the weird like rubious loop types
Speaker 1: staircase then like passing objects back and forth in a
Speaker 1: circle while inside and around the enclosed stairwell. Um, there's
Speaker 1: one where Kevin walks around with a cup to show
Speaker 1: that the stairs aren't like clearly like heavily slanted, like
Speaker 1: the water stays pretty pretty level as he walks all
Speaker 1: the way through, and like we follow with him the
Speaker 1: entire time. Um. So yeah, Like the overall like nerdy
Speaker 1: and low fi style of the University video match with
Speaker 1: like the insane feet of architectural illusion is a really
Speaker 1: fun mixed like it's like it's like it's it's it
Speaker 1: is very like surreal, but not totally on purpose, because
Speaker 1: it's just all of these like regular college students showing
Speaker 1: this like really cool architecture by this really good architect
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh yeah, they're just like so chill
Speaker 1: about it. Um, it is it is. It is pretty fun.
Speaker 1: It's pretty fun. Um. After the third episode of the
Speaker 1: Imagine Our i T video was posted, finally the mind
Speaker 1: boggling looping staircase of building seven in of our T
Speaker 1: started to gain a lot of confused appreciation. UM and
Speaker 1: the dorky University Science show went vital. People started traveling
Speaker 1: from out of state even other countries to see the
Speaker 1: Asherian stairwell themselves of and film videos on social media
Speaker 1: as as they walked through it. There this this one
Speaker 1: video of like people traveling to a different country and
Speaker 1: they're like harassing like the school staff to try to
Speaker 1: like tell them where it is, and they're like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, you're still doing this because it was like
Speaker 1: because like this film was this video is like like
Speaker 1: years old, but it's it still happens. People still travel
Speaker 1: there to to specifically see it. Um. There is like
Speaker 1: tense online discussion and debate on how the Filipino architect
Speaker 1: Raphael Avugando was able to achieve the effect and what
Speaker 1: kind of other bizarre architectural experiments he may have worked on,
Speaker 1: because you can find his Facebook page and you can
Speaker 1: find some stuff about him, but he has not really
Speaker 1: because like this this steroile was built in the late sixties,
Speaker 1: but you haven't you, So he even though he has
Speaker 1: an online presence, he's like he's like he's not like active,
Speaker 1: so it's unclear like what else he's actually been doing. Um,
Speaker 1: but I would I would, I would love to learn
Speaker 1: more about this architect and what else he's done because
Speaker 1: this it is it is really rare to have these
Speaker 1: very small, condensed but like high effort type like type builds,
Speaker 1: and like the the existence of the whole thing. Posted
Speaker 1: some really interesting questions around how extremely clever paradoxical design
Speaker 1: can push the boundary of how we make assumptions about
Speaker 1: spatial physics UM, and how we visually and physically demonstrate
Speaker 1: things that we usually can only depict in two dimensions,
Speaker 1: right like you can you can easily depict the the
Speaker 1: issuing in stairwell in two dimensions, but when you're scaling
Speaker 1: that up to three dimensions, it's obviously more works like
Speaker 1: like that. That is that is part of the paradox um.
Speaker 1: Plus you know, it also demonstrates the importance of art
Speaker 1: and how ideas once thought impossible or merely optical illusions
Speaker 1: can actually, with enough datacat effort, break into our real reality. Uh.
Speaker 1: If a brilliant architect can manage to build this physically
Speaker 1: and like logically impossible structure, what other types of things
Speaker 1: can we actually view as possible? Um? The video now
Speaker 1: has like over a million views on its original upload.
Speaker 1: UM and videos about the r I t stairwell have
Speaker 1: ranked up as many as like twenty five million views.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's pretty cool. Yeah. You know what else demonstrates
Speaker 1: the looping nature of time. Having to listen to all
Speaker 1: these ads that we do, ye do we we are
Speaker 1: we are back. I've I've rounded the corner and we
Speaker 1: are back where we came from. Um because of the
Speaker 1: fun paradox of architecture. Um. The one the one other
Speaker 1: thing I should mention it before we continue on this
Speaker 1: episode is that the entire thing is fake. It's false.
Speaker 1: No way, not this time. We created it. Not this time, no,
Speaker 1: not this time. It's totally made up. Because of course
Speaker 1: it's it's a staircase that breaks the basic girls of
Speaker 1: movement in physics. Kevin walks up the stairs and teleports
Speaker 1: to the lower stairwell. Belief them this this that's not
Speaker 1: that's that's not an architectural allusion. It's called a good video.
Speaker 1: And the day and adobe after effects like no, you're
Speaker 1: you're really gonna believe a video on the Internet and
Speaker 1: some well placed, falsified Internet posts over the very basic
Speaker 1: rules that governed our universe. But like, oh boy, did
Speaker 1: it fool millions of people? Uh? And if I played
Speaker 1: my cards right, I hope most of our listeners until
Speaker 1: the last few seconds. Um yeah, and uh so the
Speaker 1: whole the whole thing was a was a student like
Speaker 1: film and art project around around building a modern myth.
Speaker 1: Um the it's because it's sure, It's sure is interesting
Speaker 1: how good storytelling can overrule obvious logical processes. The tale
Speaker 1: of the is Sharian Stairwell is one of my favorite
Speaker 1: case studies and how disinprobation spreads and it's believed while
Speaker 1: all in defiance of the basic rules of reality, because
Speaker 1: it's not a matter of what facts are true, it's
Speaker 1: about what facts are compelling. And the idea of a
Speaker 1: logically impossible staircase being built by a brilliant Philippino architect
Speaker 1: is more interesting than it being someone's weird and disinformation
Speaker 1: art project. Um there. So yeah, Like I want to say,
Speaker 1: like how what what were you guys thinking as I
Speaker 1: was explaining the Asurian stairwell, Like where did you see
Speaker 1: this going? Okay, so I had in the back of
Speaker 1: my head, Okay, we should we should mention this. Garrison
Speaker 1: has been hyping up this episode for like I don't
Speaker 1: even a pretty amount of time nothing, Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: a staircase, and I'm like what what? I was like,
Speaker 1: my my brain my brain started going because he said
Speaker 1: and I was like my like my encountering surgency brain
Speaker 1: flicked on and I was like, wait a second, hold time,
Speaker 1: is this like some kind of like weird like we've
Speaker 1: redesigned the college campuses so they stop people stopped taking
Speaker 1: the dean hostage, a thing that used to happen constantly
Speaker 1: and with all my favorite party about this would happen constantly,
Speaker 1: and you'd get New York Times articles calling it non violent. Great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah it was that was that was. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: spent more mental energy that I probably should have tried
Speaker 1: to figure out how it worked out. Was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe they just made it, Like if they
Speaker 1: just made it Acus Razor, it's obviously yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: I was. I was in the like I was in
Speaker 1: the like okay, so they built a staircase, they built
Speaker 1: another the viewers cannot see my fingers and it was like,
Speaker 1: it's a staircase. It doesn't tell it. It was like
Speaker 1: it was like, but you can't find videos of people
Speaker 1: traveling to the school to see if it's real. And
Speaker 1: they try it and they're so disappointed. They're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's no, it's just stairs. It doesn't it doesn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's disappointed in a lot of ways because it's it's
Speaker 1: not even like a thing where like there's like another
Speaker 1: back staircase that you walked down. Then again it's just
Speaker 1: it's just nothing. It's just stas I was hoping there
Speaker 1: was like, actually clever thing is No, it's just it's
Speaker 1: not really it's it's it's just. It was that meme
Speaker 1: where all the math doesn't add up in the person
Speaker 1: what is happening? I was like, all right, Garrison, you
Speaker 1: got us here. You made Robert get up before noon.
Speaker 1: What is happening? Well, the reason, the real reason I
Speaker 1: got up before I got Robert up before noon is
Speaker 1: because I actually, um have scheduled an interview with the
Speaker 1: creator of the Assarian Stairwell, the actual one be like
Speaker 1: the online art project and building a modern myth idea um,
Speaker 1: which we are now going to segue into. So yeah,
Speaker 1: what what follows is us talking with the creator of
Speaker 1: the Assarian Stairwell project. Hello, we are we are back
Speaker 1: from our probably very very brief break um and with
Speaker 1: me along with Robert and Chris and Sophie is Uh Michael,
Speaker 1: the creator of the Sharian Stairwell Project and the Building
Speaker 1: the Modern Myths Project. Hello greetings, Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us to talk about one of my one
Speaker 1: of my favorite things actually is which is here a
Speaker 1: little to us to project? Um yeah, I've been a
Speaker 1: fan of this for a long time and found it
Speaker 1: to be really compelling and interesting. Um and I so
Speaker 1: I just walked through Robert and Chris and Sophie what
Speaker 1: what it what it was, but from the perspective of
Speaker 1: it being true for like for the good fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: I was I was episode was going, I was going
Speaker 1: through talking about it as if it were completely real,
Speaker 1: but curious that it was. It was slightly baffling because
Speaker 1: again we were told nothing, and then what we got
Speaker 1: is Garrison is talking about a YouTube video about an
Speaker 1: architecture thing and I was like what here? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then and then then talking about how oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: I guess one more thing is that it's actually fake.
Speaker 1: Um and it's part of this whole this whole thing.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I would I would love to talk to
Speaker 1: you about both, like how how you like logistically like
Speaker 1: made the project, but also like the underlying you're wondering
Speaker 1: thought thoughts that like inspired you to do in the
Speaker 1: first place, and then like retrospected now almost like ten
Speaker 1: years later, like how do you view the project as
Speaker 1: like happening you know, right before like the peak of
Speaker 1: online disinformation? Um? Right, So but first of all, I
Speaker 1: just think we should would probably start start at the beginning,
Speaker 1: like what what was your inspirations for this type of
Speaker 1: like online like very because it seems it seems it
Speaker 1: seems built to go viral in a lot of ways. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: So this was around twenty eleven, I guess was when
Speaker 1: I first got the idea. It was for my master's thesis,
Speaker 1: my m f A for film at Rochester r I
Speaker 1: t and UM. The idea actually began from this like
Speaker 1: deep anxiety about how to discern fact from fiction? Um.
Speaker 1: At the time, like I came into film school like
Speaker 1: really into like realism in films like Romanian new Wave
Speaker 1: mckel hanaka dar Dan Brothers. Like these are filmmakers who
Speaker 1: are like they're sort of like the modern day version
Speaker 1: of Italian nero neo realism, and they're trying to like
Speaker 1: depict like these um, reality as it is. I wanted
Speaker 1: to like learn how to make those types of films. UM.
Speaker 1: So over like with each year, that's what I tried
Speaker 1: to get better at. And the more I tried to
Speaker 1: do that, UM well, like a number of things were
Speaker 1: happening around that time. Right in class, they showed us
Speaker 1: that these mockumentaries called No Lies, which was made in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three by this guy called Mitchell Black actually
Speaker 1: won a student oscar at the time, and uh Delusions
Speaker 1: and Modern Primitivism two thousand one by this guy named
Speaker 1: Daniel Laughlin, UM, and these Like I was like floored
Speaker 1: because I thought they were real, like real documentaries and um,
Speaker 1: and it bothered me, like our teachers still this afterwards
Speaker 1: that these were actually scripted works of fiction with like
Speaker 1: really really good actors, and it like I went into
Speaker 1: kind of like existential crisis mode afterwards, like how do
Speaker 1: I even discern what's true from what's not if I
Speaker 1: got fooled by these things, especially like that's like my concentration,
Speaker 1: that's what I've been studying for years, and even I
Speaker 1: was not even able to tell that they were fake. Right,
Speaker 1: There was that going on, and then there was like
Speaker 1: smartphones were becoming a thing, Like I just looked it up.
Speaker 1: Smartphones didn't start out out selling flip phones still, so
Speaker 1: around this time, like it was becoming a thing where
Speaker 1: everyone would have the Internet in their pockets. So I
Speaker 1: guess there was that anxiety going on trying to think about, um, um,
Speaker 1: how we're starting to function and how we're how I
Speaker 1: remember when I proposed my thesis, did the thesis committee,
Speaker 1: I um, one of the things that I was telling
Speaker 1: them was, um, I have this worry about how reliant
Speaker 1: we are on the Internet to determine what's true and
Speaker 1: what's not. And this is like like my professors found
Speaker 1: my concerns like really abstract and theoretical, like why do
Speaker 1: you even care? Because this right, Like why did you
Speaker 1: about fact and ficture? It wasn't like fake news. That
Speaker 1: wasn't even an It wasn't It didn't become part of
Speaker 1: the everyday lexicon, like you said, until six when Trump
Speaker 1: started throwing that term around and suddenly we hear about
Speaker 1: it every day. Um, So there was that going on.
Speaker 1: Trayvon Martin was a thing, and for the first time,
Speaker 1: like nationally, you could see like disinformation like on you know,
Speaker 1: just like exaggerated versions of different different accounts from like
Speaker 1: polarizing sides. So all that was going on, and so
Speaker 1: I I wanted to it was it was like this
Speaker 1: film project was about um trying to take something that
Speaker 1: was Are you familiar with with the difference between like
Speaker 1: a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge? Yeah? Okay, so
Speaker 1: so so like you know, for for anyone who might
Speaker 1: be listening that doesn't really know the exact difference. A
Speaker 1: priori knowledge is the type of knowledge that you can
Speaker 1: have without needing to make observations or conduct experiments or
Speaker 1: look at surveys or do any research of any any kind.
Speaker 1: Is a sort of knowledge you can know just by
Speaker 1: reasoning it out, but just by sitting in a room
Speaker 1: by yourself in the dark, you could figure things out.
Speaker 1: This is the sort This is a priori knowledge um.
Speaker 1: So for an example of that is like knowing that
Speaker 1: all bachelor's are unmarried, right, or all triangles of three sides,
Speaker 1: that's a priori knowledge. An example of oppos stereori knowledge
Speaker 1: um is something that you find out through observation or
Speaker 1: you need using one or more of your five senses, right,
Speaker 1: Like Joe Biden is the President of the United States. Um,
Speaker 1: the masses of Mars is six point four one seven
Speaker 1: one times ten to the twys. You actually have to
Speaker 1: go out into the world and conduct surveys or do research.
Speaker 1: So that's oppos stereo knowledge. So the idea was to
Speaker 1: take something that was a priori as something that could
Speaker 1: that could um be disproven by reason alone, Like you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have You wouldn't need to do any research in
Speaker 1: order to to know that it was false. You'd simply
Speaker 1: had to reflect on it and um think about it. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we could have picked anything, right, we could have.
Speaker 1: We could have said made up like a fake news
Speaker 1: report that Lee's mathematicians that m I T having invented
Speaker 1: like a square with five sides something like that. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: I remember that weekend up there in sm now had
Speaker 1: this sketch. I think it was like, um, forget who
Speaker 1: it was. It might have been Kevin Nealon or something
Speaker 1: like that. The report was like scientists and mathematicians have
Speaker 1: discovered the new number. The number exists between five and six,
Speaker 1: and they're calling it the numbers spleen, you know, something
Speaker 1: like that, which is like just impossible. So, um, so
Speaker 1: come up with something that could be disproven by reason alone,
Speaker 1: and at the same time surrounded with this wealth of
Speaker 1: online information UM supporting its veracity. So like you know,
Speaker 1: it was kind of a social experiment. So I was like,
Speaker 1: have we are we so far beyond rational thinking that
Speaker 1: even something that can be disproven a priori people would
Speaker 1: believe And it was like, we didn't really know the
Speaker 1: answer to that, but we were going to commit to
Speaker 1: creating this thing as though it was real and but
Speaker 1: which was like logically impossible. So in a way it
Speaker 1: anticipated the age of like this information because it wasn't
Speaker 1: just Yeah. The thing I kind of alluded to in
Speaker 1: my little scripted portion is that like, yeah, it wasn't
Speaker 1: just the YouTube video. There was also this extra online
Speaker 1: content that was created, um, some of which articles, So yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: like there was you can find like articles, forum posts,
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff, like like like if yeah,
Speaker 1: like so if you could look into it more and
Speaker 1: find these other things, but it's still contradicts the basic
Speaker 1: logical processes that we can use to discern what is
Speaker 1: real what is not ums, Like yeah, in terms of
Speaker 1: like believing in a five seed square, like no, that's
Speaker 1: not what that that that's not how like physics and
Speaker 1: like spatial like the spatial dimensions work. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and then in terms of all the extra material you
Speaker 1: filmed for it, because there was like there was like
Speaker 1: I think I read around like nine hours of documentary footage.
Speaker 1: Was also a lot like a lot of footage, but
Speaker 1: it was only made into like probably a thirty minute thing. Um.
Speaker 1: We got our friends, like at the very very beginning,
Speaker 1: we got our friends to play along with it. Like
Speaker 1: so whenever you see posts about this, just comment like
Speaker 1: it's real, Like, yeah, I was there. It was really great.
Speaker 1: And um, eventually people would actually start visiting the stairwell,
Speaker 1: like from all over, like from Canada. They crossed the
Speaker 1: border to get there because it's in upstate New York, right, Um.
Speaker 1: And I actually ran into a couple from Indie, uh
Speaker 1: who happened to be visiting visiting New York, and they
Speaker 1: were like, since we're here, we'd like to see this
Speaker 1: stare well that sort of thing. Um. Oh no, I know.
Speaker 1: I felt really bad for a lot of the visitors,
Speaker 1: so we actually had to come up with souvenirs so
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't leave empty handed, right, So we made
Speaker 1: fake We made postcards like saying I've been to the
Speaker 1: Share and stareile and stuff like that program good and
Speaker 1: um what happened and the way we explained it. So
Speaker 1: a lot of people were really mad actually you know,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine when they got there. But after um,
Speaker 1: we would explain what we were doing to them with
Speaker 1: the project. Like a lot of them actually like started
Speaker 1: playing along and thought was really cool, and they went
Speaker 1: home with their souvenirs and told their friends that they
Speaker 1: just saw this amazing thing. So you know, it kind
Speaker 1: of built that way for a little bit. I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's it's like telling kids that Santa isn't real exactly,
Speaker 1: and then some of them will be like play along
Speaker 1: with like okay, cool, this means I can play along
Speaker 1: with the myth to help you other kids happy. And
Speaker 1: some of will be like, what, oh no, my entire
Speaker 1: reality is broken. And when you find out it's your
Speaker 1: trying to like pass it on exactly that. So a
Speaker 1: lot of that was going on, Like Shack the Basketball
Speaker 1: Player posted about it at some point, Joe Rogan talked
Speaker 1: about it on his podcast They Got kind of Crazy.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, did Joe Rogan know it wasn't real? Um,
Speaker 1: it's funny. You should see the clip of him doing it,
Speaker 1: because he was like it was him, and who's the
Speaker 1: other guy, Bert Kreiser or something. Anyway, they were arguing
Speaker 1: about whether or not was really. The other guy was like, no,
Speaker 1: it's real, it's so real. Rogan was like, all you
Speaker 1: guys are fucking idiots. You're all idiots. Let's google it
Speaker 1: right now. They google it and they look up an
Speaker 1: article and Joe Joe Rogan's like, Okay, yeah, alright, it's
Speaker 1: still fucking stupid. The guy who built it is fucking
Speaker 1: you know. I you have You have no idea how
Speaker 1: happy you have faced it because I in my in
Speaker 1: my research, but like I have like read your thesis.
Speaker 1: I read all the lots of articles about this. I
Speaker 1: did not come across the rug clip, but I would, right.
Speaker 1: Um it's like way back right, it's like ten years ago,
Speaker 1: and it's like a lot of stuff to dig through
Speaker 1: and I found it though. Again, um, so I'd like
Speaker 1: to kind of go into like the logistics of like
Speaker 1: actually doing this in terms of like creating all the
Speaker 1: fake like web content, but also like you know, dreaming
Speaker 1: up this like family friendly science show that's made by
Speaker 1: our I t and like how like you know the
Speaker 1: thing between like naturalism and realism and making it like
Speaker 1: playing not trying to replicate reality, but playing as if
Speaker 1: it were reality, and how those those are two different things. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well what we wanted to make it as real as possible,
Speaker 1: and like that's what I was I'd been studying anyway,
Speaker 1: but in like a dramatic context, like making narrative films. Um.
Speaker 1: And the idea was to, um, there's this event at
Speaker 1: r I t every year which gets a lot of people,
Speaker 1: like thirty thousand people a year go to the campus
Speaker 1: and look at like, um, these uh whatever the students
Speaker 1: are working on. It's kind of like a mini like
Speaker 1: festival type of thing. Well, not many is pretty big.
Speaker 1: So we just we wanted to make a video for
Speaker 1: that event. Um. As though we were promoting the event, Hey,
Speaker 1: come see the Assarian stairwell when you get your r
Speaker 1: I T UM and you know you normally for these
Speaker 1: like for these for these events, if you have a
Speaker 1: booth or something, you'll see reservations and you'll see like
Speaker 1: four people reserve fifteen people. Like we were like started
Speaker 1: getting nervous and we found out we got a sense
Speaker 1: that this was gonna be big because like when I
Speaker 1: looked at like the reservations for like our non existent
Speaker 1: starewell they were like one thousand plus visitors. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I still remember like going to campus that day at
Speaker 1: the festival Saturday, and like my friend Ira like comes
Speaker 1: up to me, is like, Mike, people want to kill you,
Speaker 1: like cover get over here, and I was like trying
Speaker 1: to not show my face anyway. Yeah that's what. So
Speaker 1: what the way, Like a lot of the legs of
Speaker 1: the project was just like word of mouth, I guess,
Speaker 1: and we actually ran out of money. Um, we didn't
Speaker 1: get to do like the web stuff on the scale
Speaker 1: that we wanted to, but it turned out that we
Speaker 1: didn't even have to. In fact, like within a few
Speaker 1: days or maybe a week or something after the original
Speaker 1: video came out, I posted a video explaining that it's
Speaker 1: a myth. Like I posted it and I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, that was a fun ride. Now I was
Speaker 1: gonna be over because here's a video of me explaining everything, right,
Speaker 1: And people still didn't believe it. People were saying that
Speaker 1: my my video explaining was fake, that was a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Like people were you know, like invested the into the
Speaker 1: actual myth of it. Yeah, because it is it is
Speaker 1: so much for a lot of people, they've thought that
Speaker 1: is more compelling than the idea that is this like
Speaker 1: you know, project around what is real and what's not.
Speaker 1: They've got so invested in the reality of it that
Speaker 1: they'll explain away every other explanation, right right, um, exactly
Speaker 1: Like my I had a teacher at Rutger's where I
Speaker 1: did my undergrad to Maudlin. He used to say that,
Speaker 1: you know, there's two types of thinking. There's reasoning and
Speaker 1: there's rationalizing. Reasoning is when when you start from a
Speaker 1: place of ignorance and you um, look at the best
Speaker 1: evidence and the best arguments you can find and follow
Speaker 1: that through to the you know, the rational conclusion. Rationalizing
Speaker 1: is when you start from what you want to believe
Speaker 1: and working backwards and looking for you confirmation, right, looking
Speaker 1: for the arguments that are already support what you're saying. There.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of a lot of rationalizing going on.
Speaker 1: I guess people wanted to believe it. Yeah, for for
Speaker 1: the how much how many people in this because they
Speaker 1: assume for all of like the filming, like like everyone
Speaker 1: was all like in on it. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: there's whole bunch of great stuff around like all of
Speaker 1: like the men on the street segments are are are
Speaker 1: like perfectly done in terms of like people like just
Speaker 1: acting like regular university students, like talking about the stairwell
Speaker 1: and like how they've got like lost, and then they're
Speaker 1: like looping around in a circle. Um. And all the
Speaker 1: segments with you with um like inside the stairwell with
Speaker 1: all like the very like the very clever end of thing.
Speaker 1: I assume you're using stuff like Adobe after effects. Um,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's it is played. It's played so well
Speaker 1: like it's it's I think part of the part of
Speaker 1: why it's so successful is that it's not filmed like
Speaker 1: you would film something too high like like like for
Speaker 1: a lot of films when they want to do like
Speaker 1: like you know, like like ah the term is like
Speaker 1: a wonner where they had like one long shot and
Speaker 1: then they like hide the transitions in between. You can
Speaker 1: you can obviously tell like they're filming it to make
Speaker 1: these transitions work versus the way you film. This is
Speaker 1: just how people would film it if they were filming
Speaker 1: this four reel um. And they tell that, and it's
Speaker 1: it is so carefully done because it's not trying to
Speaker 1: be something it is. It is just being the thing
Speaker 1: so earnestly in terms of like how how the actors
Speaker 1: like stumble over their lines and the like the opening segment, um,
Speaker 1: like the aesthetics of like all of like the title
Speaker 1: cards and everything is just so it has this has
Speaker 1: this like aura of earnestness, which I think helps sells
Speaker 1: the whole project so so much. Yeah. Yeah, actually speaking
Speaker 1: of the show and like the cheesy title cards and stuff,
Speaker 1: my girlfriend at the time was a producer for this
Speaker 1: show called this local show called Homework Cloudline and where
Speaker 1: kids call in with their homework and they answer the
Speaker 1: questions about it. I studied the ship out of that show,
Speaker 1: just looking at how they built the sets and how
Speaker 1: cheesy and how awkward like the host store, because a
Speaker 1: lot of it was like a lot of the realism
Speaker 1: I think of it is just um yeah, the awkwardness
Speaker 1: of the people. How it's not um, it's not really
Speaker 1: meant to be and and like like the best the
Speaker 1: most convincing untruths, right, is a combination of fact and fiction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know a lot of and blending in the
Speaker 1: actors with real people, you know, in in in the
Speaker 1: in the actual video stuff like that. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like it comes goes pretty viral. Um, you like pretty
Speaker 1: quick create a very easy explanation for No, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not real. It's part of this project. People still
Speaker 1: believe it for years and years. Um. As kind of
Speaker 1: the decade progresses, we go into like the era of disinformation,
Speaker 1: everyone starts getting shown into their pockets. Everyone has Facebook
Speaker 1: with them wherever they go, everyone has Twitter with them
Speaker 1: wherever they go. How is kind of your views on
Speaker 1: like the ethics of the project and what it demonstrates
Speaker 1: in terms of like a case study and like a
Speaker 1: social experiment, Like how has that changed over the years
Speaker 1: from like you like ten years ago when you're drimming
Speaker 1: this up to you now after you know, we've had
Speaker 1: stuff like you know like January six and chew and on.
Speaker 1: You know, all these types of things which I feel
Speaker 1: like if are almost like foreshadowed in this in this
Speaker 1: weird way by showing how successful your little project is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm so a lot of a lot of the criticisms
Speaker 1: that it was faced from the get go, like from
Speaker 1: R I. T. Professors even it's still facing right now,
Speaker 1: Like it's still the type of thing people bring up,
Speaker 1: which is essentially that, hey, there's so much disinformation out there.
Speaker 1: At the time, we weren't even using those terms disinformation, right,
Speaker 1: but basically people were. We're bringing up the same complaints,
Speaker 1: which is, there's so much disinformation out there, you're basically
Speaker 1: just adding to it. What what are you even doing?
Speaker 1: So I guess the idea is that, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's a very noble idea, which is what sort of
Speaker 1: ponds to disinformation? Right, we should I guess the idea
Speaker 1: is we should call out every instance of it when
Speaker 1: we can flag posts, UM, report posts that violate community
Speaker 1: community standards, you know, speak out, um, provide counter evidence
Speaker 1: when you see fake news, that sort of thing, And
Speaker 1: I think that's great, that's a good thing, UM. But disinformation,
Speaker 1: the problem of disinformation is at the time, this is
Speaker 1: kind of how I explained that, like ten years ago,
Speaker 1: I I described it as a pen as an epidemic, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: or or like a cockroach infestation, like every time you
Speaker 1: kill one, ten more spring up and v this this
Speaker 1: notion of like we gotta call out every instance of
Speaker 1: disinformation and stomp it away is like it's great, but
Speaker 1: you're focused on killing cockroaches. Yeah, it's like addressing the symptoms,
Speaker 1: not the actual problem, right, I want to get to
Speaker 1: the cockroach's nest. Right, And whenever whenever I give talks
Speaker 1: about this um this project, people always approach me afterwards,
Speaker 1: you know, like wanting me to kind of because we
Speaker 1: we don't just talk about this project. We talked about
Speaker 1: like deep fake stuff, like we show speeches of Obama,
Speaker 1: like looking like the real Obama, but it's like completely fake, right,
Speaker 1: And people start to realize the holy sh it, like
Speaker 1: I don't even know what's real or not anymore, Like
Speaker 1: what can I trust? And they approach me expecting me
Speaker 1: to ease their anxiety somehow and kind of like guide
Speaker 1: them through how to discern what's true from what's not,
Speaker 1: as though my project was about finding some sort of solution.
Speaker 1: And I tell them that, like, my project wasn't about
Speaker 1: solving the problem. It was about seeing the problem, right,
Speaker 1: It's about it's about trying to get to the heart
Speaker 1: of the matter. And it's like to me, I think,
Speaker 1: like the heart of the matter, like the cockroach's nest
Speaker 1: is the I don't know you. There are different ways
Speaker 1: to say, but basically, the the lack of critical thinking
Speaker 1: in individuals and like in this society we shaped together
Speaker 1: or um or lack of a willingness to think through
Speaker 1: things carefully. Maybe that's that's um. That's like, if we
Speaker 1: had a society of critical thinkers, this wouldn't be much
Speaker 1: of a problem. I think it's because so many people
Speaker 1: come at a lot of information from like when you
Speaker 1: would say the rational viewpoint of like they're trying to
Speaker 1: use reason and stuff, like they're trying to think critically,
Speaker 1: they're trying to think logically, but they come at it
Speaker 1: in the terms of rationalizing stuff they already believe. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a very prevailing type of idea
Speaker 1: in terms of like, yes, I'm gonna believe in this thing,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna find evidence to support it. Um, which
Speaker 1: isn't critical thinking. I don't think. I'm not really know
Speaker 1: what it is that is itself a logical fallacy. But
Speaker 1: that is so calm, especially on the Internet, because the
Speaker 1: Internet encourages the backfire effects. You know, whenever someone calls
Speaker 1: it on something, you want to be right. So you're
Speaker 1: gonna it's as soon as soon as someone callses something,
Speaker 1: you're going to backfire. You're going to like be come
Speaker 1: even more entrenched in what you believe. Um when you know,
Speaker 1: when when you explain to someone that know, Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: is bad, but she doesn't eat the blood of children, like, no,
Speaker 1: she does. I saw all this thing. I have to
Speaker 1: believe it because like all of the things are tied
Speaker 1: up in what makes you a person. And now all
Speaker 1: of these ideas that have that where used to be
Speaker 1: just be conspiracy theories that you could believe in for fun,
Speaker 1: are now so a part of like what people's sense
Speaker 1: of being are and how they have their entire world
Speaker 1: view that there's so much more because the Internet is
Speaker 1: such a bigger part of their lives. Everything on the
Speaker 1: Internet is a bigger part of the lives for each person.
Speaker 1: So it is more of an ontological threat because these
Speaker 1: things are so closer together now, right, They used to
Speaker 1: be much more distinction between the Internet and you because
Speaker 1: you can only ask the computer every once in a while.
Speaker 1: We can now carry on a supercomputer wherever you go,
Speaker 1: so it is like a part of you, Like you
Speaker 1: bring it with you almost everywhere. It's always in your pocket.
Speaker 1: So these things are so like stitched together that prying
Speaker 1: them apart and telling people know this thing you would
Speaker 1: carry around Actually probably most don't you see on it
Speaker 1: isn't isn't actually true, like there is people can like
Speaker 1: believe that in their heads but don't actually don't Actually
Speaker 1: the belief hasn't actually impact them because like we all
Speaker 1: know that there's like we all know that people can
Speaker 1: just go on the internet and lie, right, that is
Speaker 1: like part of the joke, but we still don't act
Speaker 1: like it. Like oftentimes we get so we get so
Speaker 1: like encased into the stories that we tell ourselves. Right,
Speaker 1: the part of our the is sharing stairwell is so
Speaker 1: good is that it's such a it's such a compelling
Speaker 1: story like that, Like the idea of like a brilliant
Speaker 1: architect bringing like you know, building this paradox in the
Speaker 1: real world is like is so much more fun than
Speaker 1: being like, yeah, some dude just knows how to use
Speaker 1: Adobe after effects. Like right, So you get so entrenched
Speaker 1: into storytelling because the story of like politicians eating up
Speaker 1: eating the blood of children is so much more interesting
Speaker 1: than no, politicians just don't care about you, like, and
Speaker 1: getting to the heart of that problem is so much
Speaker 1: more difficult than just you know, debunk king things because
Speaker 1: you can debunk things all day and does that actually matter? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there there's there's a secondary problem that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's another like another level of it, which
Speaker 1: is that, yeah, like everyone knows that there's this information now,
Speaker 1: like everyone does. But but that just makes it worse
Speaker 1: because now if you want to do this information, what
Speaker 1: you can claim is like, oh, hey, look at all
Speaker 1: these other times that all the stuff has been fake.
Speaker 1: And then you know, and this is how you get
Speaker 1: everyone like doing frame by frame analysis of like a
Speaker 1: bombing and going oh, these are all crisis actors, and
Speaker 1: it's like you know, and you talk, you talk to
Speaker 1: these people and they're like, oh, yeah, no, I did.
Speaker 1: I did the research. Look I like I saw through
Speaker 1: the lives. It's like, no, You've just completely made this
Speaker 1: thing up in your head. You can see the green
Speaker 1: screen compression and like, no, it's just regular video compression.
Speaker 1: And it's like, yeah, like everyone can be a detective now,
Speaker 1: so everyone can be so convinced to their own conclusions
Speaker 1: even when the conclusions turned out to be not true. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a problem. If there wasn't exy solution, we wouldn't
Speaker 1: have the problem, right, it's one of those things. It's
Speaker 1: like your project is a very good example of like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's a very demonstrative thing. You can
Speaker 1: like you you take someone along this journey and demonstrate, hey,
Speaker 1: this can happen to you, so you should watch out
Speaker 1: for us. Right, look look at the story I crafted.
Speaker 1: Look how you become convinced it for these six minutes
Speaker 1: and then you think, oh, wait, no, you can't teleport
Speaker 1: to a bottom stairwell. That's not that's not how that works. Um.
Speaker 1: But because you take them on that journey, it's a
Speaker 1: very it's a I love it so much as like
Speaker 1: a demonstrative process, being like like this can happen, so
Speaker 1: watch out for it in the future. I think is
Speaker 1: honestly more useful than just debunking somebody because you can
Speaker 1: you can debunk all day, you can have the backfire
Speaker 1: effect and stuff. And you're right about the demonstrative stuff,
Speaker 1: because it's like if a bunch of film students and
Speaker 1: volunteers with no connections and no resources pulled this off
Speaker 1: like we did, like a tally of all the videos
Speaker 1: at the end of the year of um, you know,
Speaker 1: all the videos that ripped it off and posted on
Speaker 1: their own channels and all that. Um, it was like
Speaker 1: fifty million, right, So if if a bunch of film
Speaker 1: students like had that much influence, what more can like
Speaker 1: people who are actually fund like and resources, right, what
Speaker 1: could they do? And we were just doing and ours
Speaker 1: was about like this innocuous, silly Stairwell, it wasn't about
Speaker 1: anything that would cause you know, anyone's death or anything
Speaker 1: like that or and like you know, something like in
Speaker 1: Me and Mar where the ME and Mar military basically
Speaker 1: systemically systematically created fake articles and fake photos to create
Speaker 1: like to arouse this dame for the row hinge of
Speaker 1: people and basically they incited a genocide through Facebook, just
Speaker 1: through fake news right in the Philippines where I live
Speaker 1: right now, um, which a lot of commentators call like
Speaker 1: the patient zero of disinformation because this guy called was
Speaker 1: elected president basically ran running his entire campaign on disinformation,
Speaker 1: and after him was Brexit like a month later, and
Speaker 1: after that was Trump got the nomination. So like what's
Speaker 1: her name, Kate Katie Barth Barth or or something like that.
Speaker 1: One of the executives of Facebook referred to the Philippines
Speaker 1: as Patient zero. In the era of disinformation because like um,
Speaker 1: and the thing that the president here right now was
Speaker 1: running on was basically like the same sort of um
Speaker 1: bothering and scapegoating of a certain group. And he said
Speaker 1: basically he's the guy who said like, basically, if you're
Speaker 1: a drug user or a drug dealer, it should be
Speaker 1: okay to murder you and kill you. And that's what happened.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what happened, because they were posting all these
Speaker 1: stories about um, you know, the same sorts of stories
Speaker 1: that you that that we saw in the US and
Speaker 1: twenties sixteen about undocumented immigrants or Muslims or something like that.
Speaker 1: This like oh this undocumented immigrant rate the five year
Speaker 1: old girl, you know that sort of thing. And he
Speaker 1: would the the the organized campaign UM making up stories
Speaker 1: about drug addicts like murdering and raping people. Basically like
Speaker 1: got an entire nation too, well not an entire nation,
Speaker 1: but basically this guy won the election. And you know,
Speaker 1: we have a country right now that basically lived through
Speaker 1: just atrocities the last five six years, you know, and
Speaker 1: like the double edged sort of this, like Chris mentioned,
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, this type same type of thing, because
Speaker 1: it exists. People also like retractively apply it to like
Speaker 1: you know, like Sandy Hook was staged or like even
Speaker 1: stuff now with like you know, the pandemic, right, people
Speaker 1: like what what? What is the pandemic is a real?
Speaker 1: What if all these people have just you know, conjured
Speaker 1: this thing into being and it's all a giant insufferation campaign, right,
Speaker 1: So it has this dual it has this double edged
Speaker 1: sword nature um which makes combat and disformation so challenging.
Speaker 1: It's like disiforation to combat its information to comment the
Speaker 1: idea of disinformation, and there's so many layers of it.
Speaker 1: Now there's this this it's just yeah, it makes it,
Speaker 1: it makes actually get into the heart of it so
Speaker 1: much more challenging. It's been abstracted so many times. And
Speaker 1: one of the things what didn't didn't the New York
Speaker 1: Times weren't it the first people to come up with
Speaker 1: the term fake news? And then Trump started using it
Speaker 1: after Like we was watching plotificate which newspaper was but
Speaker 1: my memory if it was like it was, it was
Speaker 1: it was the media that came up with fake news
Speaker 1: and then like Trump just took it and it became
Speaker 1: this like this just like demon they absolutely could not
Speaker 1: control and was just turned on them. Do you do
Speaker 1: you remember the context in which they used it. They
Speaker 1: were like they were I think they were calling like
Speaker 1: stuff that Trump said fake news. Mmm, I am. I'm
Speaker 1: unsure at the moment who specifically coined that term. But
Speaker 1: I mean we definitely see terms like even in terms
Speaker 1: like desipiration, which you used to be more tied to,
Speaker 1: like a discording in philosophy, breaking like in like even
Speaker 1: even back even as back far as like the eighties,
Speaker 1: getting you know, turned into an actual like political term
Speaker 1: that everybody uses. It was actually somebody from buzz Speed.
Speaker 1: An editor at buzz Speed was one of that makes sense,
Speaker 1: is one of the ones who first popularized it. Was Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there could be there could be you know, several
Speaker 1: other people that say that they coined it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I even there's even h an illustration from
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety four by by Frederick Offer with reporters carrying
Speaker 1: newspapers labeled humble news, cheap sensation, and fake news. So
Speaker 1: it's I mean, in terms of in terms of just
Speaker 1: mashing words together. I'm sure it has has had a
Speaker 1: decent history, but definitely Trump is the one that like
Speaker 1: launched it into the Zeitgeist right right, right, Let's see, Robert,
Speaker 1: you've been pretty quiet. I know it's pretty early in
Speaker 1: the morning for you. Do you have any do you
Speaker 1: have any kind of thoughts to help us kind of
Speaker 1: generally start closing us out, not not not like super immediately,
Speaker 1: but generally having that direction. I mean no, not really
Speaker 1: kind of brought uct everything. I would say, all right,
Speaker 1: all right, it's ah, yeah, I guess. Uh, Mike, what
Speaker 1: have How is this project impacted how you approach film
Speaker 1: and just the like, how you how you use the
Speaker 1: internet yourself in the past decade? M hm, Well, I
Speaker 1: I'm fully aware of what we did. Every time I'm
Speaker 1: like looking at something, I'm like they had done that,
Speaker 1: they have done this and that, you know that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Um, I don't know if it's if yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't I'm not sure how it's how this project
Speaker 1: specifically had impacted me, other than just trying to think
Speaker 1: through things a bit more carefully, trying to go through
Speaker 1: things like, um, I mean, like, so we we basically
Speaker 1: came up with this idea of what eventually became troll farms, right,
Speaker 1: like me and like my classmates would hey, we even
Speaker 1: make fake accounts and like talk about the stairwell and
Speaker 1: um so, I don't know, like a few years later,
Speaker 1: people we we learned that people were actually doing this
Speaker 1: like to influence like elections around the world, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the strategy of like the Russian troll farms
Speaker 1: and stuff, um was basically create caricature versions right of
Speaker 1: arguments from whatever side, like you know, whether they might
Speaker 1: present an argument from like the left or the right,
Speaker 1: but in like a caricaturized version of it. And um
Speaker 1: so what people would see when they see that, they'd
Speaker 1: see an argument coming from the other side, and they'd
Speaker 1: ridicule it, like look at these people who just seem
Speaker 1: crazy espousing this whatever view, you know, or they might
Speaker 1: say things like um, like yeah, if you're a Democrat,
Speaker 1: you want to abort babies that like the ninth month
Speaker 1: or something like that, which no reasonable person actually argued.
Speaker 1: So what happens is like, um people talk about how
Speaker 1: the goal of Russia was to like polarize, you know, um,
Speaker 1: polarize the political spectrum. I think like the bigger goal
Speaker 1: in the the goal that we're gonna be untangling for
Speaker 1: many many years, and the more um, the more difficult
Speaker 1: problem to deal with was that they oversimple they successfully
Speaker 1: oversimplified discourse, you know what I'm saying, Like they found
Speaker 1: a way to like oversimplify the type of discourse we're
Speaker 1: having because everyone's like arguing with such simplist thick I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if I'm making sense. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: it's like the term I use is like politics as fandom,
Speaker 1: right right, And that's I think that like intersect not
Speaker 1: not exactly what you're saying, but like intersects with that
Speaker 1: type of idea of like condensing down actual discussions on
Speaker 1: like what you believe in, um and what politics you
Speaker 1: want and how you want to put the world into
Speaker 1: this weird fandom lens of like this team versus this
Speaker 1: team which we we we we we we we. We've
Speaker 1: had a degree of that for a long long time.
Speaker 1: But with the Internet and how how discussions on the
Speaker 1: Internet are designed to work, right, how algorithms want to
Speaker 1: boost content, how there's always these short snippets they just
Speaker 1: in mirrors the way people discussed like what Star Wars
Speaker 1: character is their favorite? It's just that. But for politics, um,
Speaker 1: so it's it's just this like what if politics is
Speaker 1: just this idea of fandom, and you can debate what
Speaker 1: fandom is more valid than the other. Right, I like
Speaker 1: the last Jedi more you like Rise of Skywalker. This
Speaker 1: means your version of reality is less good than mine.
Speaker 1: So when that which is, which is but that it's
Speaker 1: that same idea but for how we like make social
Speaker 1: programs and how we address racism, and how we like
Speaker 1: give food to poor people, and how we do affordable
Speaker 1: housing and how we handle the police. So it's that
Speaker 1: type of idea which is just the disinformation kind of
Speaker 1: impacts this in part because when you flood the zone
Speaker 1: with so much conflicting information that people can't really get
Speaker 1: a handle on or easily sort of like when there
Speaker 1: when when you when you put that much confusion in
Speaker 1: to the air, um, it makes people more likely to
Speaker 1: just kind of grasp its sides because everything coming out
Speaker 1: is way too complicated and messy, and it's it takes
Speaker 1: too much work what's actually true. So holding to some
Speaker 1: lubric of well, I believe this, So that means these
Speaker 1: are the good guys, these are the bad guys, and
Speaker 1: I don't have to analyze it any deeper than that.
Speaker 1: I can reject information that comes from this group. Where
Speaker 1: I can reject information that says this, um, because I
Speaker 1: just category categorically reject you know, anything that that fits
Speaker 1: in with that, Like, that's the benefit of disinformation for
Speaker 1: authoritarians of all stripes. You're seeing in Ukraine right now,
Speaker 1: where Um, you've got all of these different authoritarian powers.
Speaker 1: You've got Turkey, you've got Russia, you've got um, you know,
Speaker 1: sucking the United States at least to the extent that
Speaker 1: like we impact a lot of things internationally. Um. And
Speaker 1: you've got them all coming down on different sides of
Speaker 1: this issue and of what's happening in Ukraine. And because
Speaker 1: there's so much disinformation and misinformation about what's going on,
Speaker 1: people just kind of grasp at whatever side I'm have
Speaker 1: been more sympathetic to recently, I'm just going to believe
Speaker 1: whatever they say because it's way too complicated to actually
Speaker 1: analyze what's going on. Yeah, And this was this was
Speaker 1: the thing that I mean, this was explicit on the left.
Speaker 1: I remember this. There was this around um sheen. There
Speaker 1: was a whole thing about how like people people like
Speaker 1: talking about anti imperialism would would literally say like nuance
Speaker 1: nuances liberalism. I don't like nuances liberalism don't don't research this,
Speaker 1: don't think about this because nuances how liberals like you know,
Speaker 1: spread sort of pro promising and change proplicanda, Like I
Speaker 1: remember those people like Ember Frost just just straight up
Speaker 1: said this and this was a huge and you know,
Speaker 1: like I I got a lot of shift for this
Speaker 1: because you know, like I remember when when when the
Speaker 1: Coon Bolivia happened, Like I made a giant thread that
Speaker 1: was trying to that was like, Okay, we need to
Speaker 1: figure out like how specifically the CIA was involved in this,
Speaker 1: Like okay, so did they plan the whole thing? Was
Speaker 1: it like we're they're working with local partners. Wasn't a
Speaker 1: thing where someone else planned it and they signed off
Speaker 1: on it? And like to this day, people think that
Speaker 1: I supported the coup because I was like we should
Speaker 1: figure out who was who the actors were in the
Speaker 1: ground because no one like this. This this, this this
Speaker 1: became like a like like like a tenant, like like
Speaker 1: an actual sort of like like political tenants of of
Speaker 1: how a lot of antimpurialism, like in the American left worked.
Speaker 1: Was you you were not supposed to do nuanced, You
Speaker 1: were not supposed to look at who was like you
Speaker 1: know if if if you spent too long looking at
Speaker 1: what was going on in the ground, people would be
Speaker 1: like you worked for the CIA and that you know,
Speaker 1: I think like we we've we've finally seen that basically
Speaker 1: blow up in their faces because you know, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: look how many of these people just like wound up
Speaker 1: supporting Russia and then spent like three months saying that
Speaker 1: Russia would never invade Ukraine. That this happens. But it's
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's it's it's extremely depressing how
Speaker 1: people who otherwise are you know, like in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, like I've spent a lot of their time
Speaker 1: like trying to filter out stuff from the media that's
Speaker 1: false just go into this because they just do not
Speaker 1: want to deal with the complexity of reality. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: easier not to. Again, if there was a simple problem,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't I mean, if there was a simple solution,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't need to discuss the problem. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I guess basically, like just to like, um, answer that
Speaker 1: question about how it I guess at the time, I'd say,
Speaker 1: like we got an up close look at how things
Speaker 1: were going to be, Like, you know, with with all
Speaker 1: these things we we kind of anticipated the next few years.
Speaker 1: Um so yeah, that's basically what happened. Um, sorry to
Speaker 1: interrupt your clothing, but no, no, no, it's the it's
Speaker 1: the best note that that we can go. Um, Michael,
Speaker 1: do you where can people find you online? And if
Speaker 1: people want to look into some of your other projects,
Speaker 1: I mean you found me, Like, if they want to
Speaker 1: find me, they'll find me, right, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: still don't know. You got my email, but Garrison is
Speaker 1: extremely good about this to any people, and I could
Speaker 1: uh yeah, well they can check out the YouTube channel
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna be posting some new films this year probably,
Speaker 1: Um so my name Michael Luck can allow or just
Speaker 1: search the Assarians there. I guess that's a way. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll add your YouTube channel to to the description. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just want to thank you so much for coming
Speaker 1: on to talk about your your project. Yeah, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. All right, Well, that that does it for
Speaker 1: us today. You can follow us on the internet for
Speaker 1: some reason, um on Twitter, Instagram, that happened here pod
Speaker 1: and cool some media and yeah, go go create a
Speaker 1: myth that people will believe and travel from out of
Speaker 1: country to walk over some stairs because that sounds like fun.
Speaker 1: Go to something like that for funzies. All right, bye bye,
Speaker 1: Except happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com or check us out on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could
Speaker 1: happen here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com
Speaker 1: slash sources. Thanks for listening.