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Speaker 1: You're listening to Unexplained, Season six, episode twenty eight The

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Speaker 1: new Sphere, Part two of three. In February twenty eighteen,

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Speaker 1: thirteen Russian nationals were indicted by the FBI for their

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Speaker 1: alleged role as part of widespread Russian governmental interference in

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Speaker 1: the twenty sixteen United States presidential election. The defendants were

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Speaker 1: charged with creating fake social media accounts in which they

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Speaker 1: posed as US citizens to ferment distrust about the candidates

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Speaker 1: and generally undermine the democratic process. The indictment pointed the

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Speaker 1: finger squarely at companies such as Facebook and Twitter. Both

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Speaker 1: are routinely accused of allowing fake news to spread, giving

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Speaker 1: credibility to false narratives through a complicated system of algorithms

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Speaker 1: that enables some stories to be promoted above others on

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Speaker 1: account of how popular they are, regardless of whether they

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Speaker 1: are true or not. In March twenty seventeen, Google, the

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Speaker 1: world's most widely used search engine, was also accused of

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Speaker 1: spreading fake news by promoting false narratives through its featured

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Speaker 1: snippets in search function, which gives short answers to common

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Speaker 1: queries through the company's speaker device, Google Home. If users

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Speaker 1: of this device back in twenty sixteen, had asked is

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Speaker 1: President Barack Obama planning a coup? For example, Google Home

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Speaker 1: would have replied, according to details exposed in Western Center

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Speaker 1: for Journalism's exclusive video, not only could Obama be in

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Speaker 1: bed with the communist Chinese, but Obama may in fact

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Speaker 1: be planning a communist coup de etat at the end

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Speaker 1: of his term in twenty sixteen. This was, of course

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Speaker 1: a complete fabrication and a little ironic considering what later

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Speaker 1: came to pass. On January sixth, twenty twenty one, concerned

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Speaker 1: by this trend, ex Google engineer Giome Shallow built a

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Speaker 1: program to investigate bias in YouTube content. Talking to Paul

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Speaker 1: Lewis for The Guardian newspaper in twenty eighteen, Shallow concluded

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Speaker 1: that quote fiction is outperforming reality, and the channel's algorithmic

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Speaker 1: preferences frequently pushed videos that are divisive, sensational, and conspiratorial.

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Speaker 1: One such example was what happened when the name David

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Speaker 1: Hogg was typed into the search engine. Hog was a

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Speaker 1: student at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School when, in the

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Speaker 1: afternoon of February fourteenth, twenty eighteen, then nineteen year old

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Speaker 1: Nicholas Cruz walked into the main building and shot dead

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Speaker 1: fourteen children and three staff members. Hog had not only

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Speaker 1: been caught up in the shooting and knew some of

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Speaker 1: the victims, he'd also become a vocal advocate for gun

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Speaker 1: control legislation in the wake of the horrific incident. According

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Speaker 1: to many of the videos that popped up on YouTube

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Speaker 1: search results, however, Hog was in fact a completely made

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Speaker 1: up person who was being played by an actor. When

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Speaker 1: a YouTube spokesperson responded to Guillaume Shallow's findings, they rightly

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Speaker 1: made the point that the results were not confirmation of

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Speaker 1: a bias in the system's algorithm, but merely a reflection

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Speaker 1: of viewers interest. If you then engaged with these videos,

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Speaker 1: the results of your subsequent searches are then skewed toward

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Speaker 1: videos displaying similar content. But perhaps this is even worse.

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Speaker 1: What this reveals is that frequently when we engage with

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Speaker 1: the online space, the world we find staring back at

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Speaker 1: us is not one that is necessarily real, but simply

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Speaker 1: one that mimics or justifies our world view. Our instinct

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Speaker 1: to forge social groups with like minded people only helps

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Speaker 1: to service this further, resulting in the online experience often

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Speaker 1: being little more than an echo chamber that distorts or

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Speaker 1: outright hides other points of view. It becomes a place

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Speaker 1: where what we suratively think to be right will trump

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Speaker 1: what is actually true almost every time. In response to this,

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Speaker 1: throughout the world, governments are being urged to clamp down

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Speaker 1: on platforms that, through their propensity to spread misinformation, are

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Speaker 1: deemed detrimental to the health of democratic societies. Yet by

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Speaker 1: doing this, governments would be imposing the same real world

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Speaker 1: restrictions on the online space that many have come to

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Speaker 1: resent in the offline world. It is a clash of

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Speaker 1: two polarizing ideas of what the Internet should be, either

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Speaker 1: something that is open source, unregulated, and libertarian, versus something

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Speaker 1: which is more controlled and stable but less egalitarian, governed

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Speaker 1: by elite and I don't necessarily use that term pejoratively

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Speaker 1: gatekeepers who decide what should or shouldn't be published. Certainly,

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Speaker 1: as the old authorities appear increasingly undermined, when citizen journalists

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Speaker 1: with no obligation to ethical standards can become as popular

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Speaker 1: and trusted as longstanding media institutions, it can often feel

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Speaker 1: to some that's, rather than offering utopia, the Internet has

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Speaker 1: delivered chaos, a place where nothing is stable, and where

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Speaker 1: it no longer matters what it's true, only what people

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Speaker 1: believe or want to be true. It is a world

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Speaker 1: where fact and fiction become progressively blurred, and as our

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Speaker 1: lives become increasingly influenced by what we experience in the

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Speaker 1: digital space, those online fictions don't just stay online, They

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Speaker 1: bleed into the real physical world, with real physical world consequences.

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Speaker 1: One bright spring morning in twenty fourteen, in the quiet

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Speaker 1: leafy city of Waukeshire, Wisconsin, local resident Greg Steinberg set

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Speaker 1: out for his usual weekend cycle. Right a short time later,

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Speaker 1: approaching the back of David's Park, he spotted what looked

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Speaker 1: like a young girl crawling out of a nearby wood.

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Speaker 1: As he drew closer, he found, to his horror that

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Speaker 1: she was covered in blood. Please help me, she cried,

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Speaker 1: reaching out in pained desperation. Gregg leaped from his bike

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Speaker 1: and rushed to help. As the girl collapsed to the ground,

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Speaker 1: Greg did his best to comfort her as he hastily

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Speaker 1: called nine one one and relaid the necessary nation to

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Speaker 1: the operator. The girl gave her name as Bella, but

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Speaker 1: was reluctant to say who attacked her until the Waukeshire

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Speaker 1: Fire and Police Department arrived moments later, and she eventually

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Speaker 1: gave up the information. The twelve year old Bella, whose

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Speaker 1: birth name was Peyton Lautner, was rushed straight to Waukeshire

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Speaker 1: Memorial Hospital and immediately operated on. She was found to

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Speaker 1: have nineteen stab wounds in total, with two entering major

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Speaker 1: organs and one missing a major artery by a matter

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Speaker 1: of millimeters. With the name and description of a suspect,

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Speaker 1: the Waukeshire Police, along with the help of the County

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Speaker 1: Sheriff's Department and an emergency helicopter, mounted an immediate search

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Speaker 1: of the area, but failed to find the perpetrator. Later

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Speaker 1: that afternoon, a Waukeshire County Sheriff deputy spotted two young

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Speaker 1: girls no more than twelve years old sitting on a

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Speaker 1: grass verge by the I ninety four highway. Pulling up

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Speaker 1: beside them, he stepped out of the car and asked

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Speaker 1: them what they were doing out there. The pair gave

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Speaker 1: their names as Morgan and a Nissa, and calmly explained

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Speaker 1: that they had just stopped for a rest while on

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Speaker 1: their way toward the Nicolay Forest, which was located about

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Speaker 1: two hundred miles away. Not quite sure what to make

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Speaker 1: of it all, the deputy ordered the pair to stand

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Speaker 1: up and hand over their bags for inspection. When they did,

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Speaker 1: he noticed then the blood spatterings on Morgan's hands and sleeves.

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Speaker 1: The girls passed him an old purse and a large

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Speaker 1: rucksack they'd been carrying, and watched blankly, making no attempt

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Speaker 1: to flee as the deputy opened the purse to find

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Speaker 1: a five inch steak knife inside, sticky with blood. The

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Speaker 1: girls were arrested and taken into custody, where a further

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Speaker 1: search of their bags revealed items of clothing, granola bars,

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Speaker 1: bottles of water, and photos of family members. If things

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Speaker 1: weren't already askew on that warm Saturday afternoon in that

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Speaker 1: ordinarily quiet, upper middle class Milwaukee suburb, they were about

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Speaker 1: to get very strange. Indeed, as twelve year olds Morgan

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Speaker 1: and a Nissa were grilled over a combined total of

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Speaker 1: nine hours, both would confess their involvement in Bella's stabbing, and,

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Speaker 1: after taking the detectives through the events of the last

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Speaker 1: twenty four hours, revealed a motivation for the attack that

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Speaker 1: was nothing that any of the officers could possibly have imagined.

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Speaker 1: The three girls, it turned out, were best friends only.

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Speaker 1: The day before the incident, they'd celebrated Morgan's twelfth birthday

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Speaker 1: together at the local ice rink before returning to her

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Speaker 1: house for a sleepover. The following morning, they'd eaten breakfast

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Speaker 1: together before heading out to play at David's Park, a

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Speaker 1: neatly kept playing field on the corner of Southeast and

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Speaker 1: Garfield in the south of the city. After messing about

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Speaker 1: for a while on the swings, Enissa suggested they head

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Speaker 1: into a small patch of nearby woodland to play hide

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Speaker 1: and seek with the others. In agreement, the three of

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Speaker 1: them made their way past a row of large houses

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Speaker 1: on a strip known as Big Bend and across the

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Speaker 1: road into the small pocket of trees on the other side.

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Speaker 1: As they stay through the tree line, Nissa and Morgan

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Speaker 1: looked around hurriedly to make sure that they were totally alone.

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Speaker 1: When Bella turned to see what they were doing, Ennissa

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Speaker 1: shouted suddenly for Morgan to do it. Morgan then pulled

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Speaker 1: a knife from under her plaid jacket and plunged it

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Speaker 1: into the chest, arms, and legs of her best friend.

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Speaker 1: Before she even had time to react, Bella screamed in

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Speaker 1: agony and begged for their help as she staggered about

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Speaker 1: before falling finally in a bloody heap on the ground.

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Speaker 1: Nissa then calmly asked her friend to try and keep

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Speaker 1: quiet and to stop screaming. Bella had little choice to

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Speaker 1: do otherwise, as she struggled to breathe and her vision

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Speaker 1: started to blur. Then her body began to get cold.

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Speaker 1: She tried to stand and with all her strength, managed

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Speaker 1: to plant her feet. Morgan and Nissa watched blankly for

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Speaker 1: a moment as Bella stumbled towards the edge of the forest,

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Speaker 1: then fell back down. She begged again for their help,

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Speaker 1: Appearing to finally come to their senses. Morgan and Nissa

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Speaker 1: seemingly came to her aid and pulled her to her

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Speaker 1: feet again, only to then turn her round and frog

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Speaker 1: march her deeper into the woods. A few moments later,

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Speaker 1: Morgan and Nissa ordered their friend to lie down on

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Speaker 1: the ground before turning their backs on her once and

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Speaker 1: for all and heading home, leaving her there to die.

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Speaker 1: Back in their separate interview rooms at the Walkesshire County

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Speaker 1: Sheriff's Department. Having detailed the circumstances of the brutal attack,

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Speaker 1: Morgan and Nissa were each asked why they'd done such

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Speaker 1: a thing. The answer was simple. They said they'd done

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Speaker 1: it to please the Slender Man. When asked later where

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Speaker 1: it was exactly that they were heading to when the

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Speaker 1: deputy picked them up, their response was even more astonishing.

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Speaker 1: The girls believed that buried deep within the seven hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand acres of Nicolay Forest, they would find slender Man's mansion,

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Speaker 1: where he'd be waiting for them with open arms. Morgan

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Speaker 1: and Nissa had discovered slender Man separately through Creepy pasta

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Speaker 1: wiki which had become a major repository for the mythos.

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Speaker 1: Most of the slender Man based creepy pas tended to

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Speaker 1: adopt the style of reported sightings or true life encounters

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Speaker 1: that people claimed to have had with the entity Before long,

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Speaker 1: the two young friends adopted a similar approach with each other,

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Speaker 1: insisting that they'd both seen the figure a number of

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Speaker 1: times throughout their lives. Reinforcing each other's delusion, the pair

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Speaker 1: decided they wanted to gain his approval, and in order

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Speaker 1: to do so, they would have to murder their best friend.

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Speaker 1: Morgan later insisted they had no particular ill will towards Bella.

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Speaker 1: She was just the most convenient means to an end

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Speaker 1: in their efforts to prove themselves worthy of the slender Man.

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Speaker 1: As journalist Alex May noted in an essay she wrote

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Speaker 1: for VQR in twenty seventeen, the girls had convinced themselves

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Speaker 1: that the very act of killing their friend would also

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Speaker 1: be the thing that conjured slender Man into existence. Mercifully,

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Speaker 1: Bella survived the ordeal, while Morgan and a Nissa were

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Speaker 1: both arrested and charged with her attempted murder and placed

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Speaker 1: in separate areas of the Washington County Jail for Juveniles.

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Speaker 1: Morgan was judged to have been the instigator of the attack,

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Speaker 1: and in an effort to determine her capacity to stand trial,

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Speaker 1: she was moved to Winnebago Mental Health Institute in the

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Speaker 1: autumn of twenty fourteen to be kept under observation. After

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Speaker 1: completing a twenty four hour psychiatric test, it was found

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Speaker 1: that she was suffering from early onset schizophrenia and ordered

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Speaker 1: to remain at the institute until her trial in December

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Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. However, the case judge perversely declared her fit

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Speaker 1: to stand trial while simultaneously ordering her to return to

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Speaker 1: the Winnebago Mental Health Institute for further treatment. Unfortunately, having

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Speaker 1: been judged fit for trial, the institute was then not

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Speaker 1: legally obliged to take her, and so Morgan was moved

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Speaker 1: back to the Washington County Jail for Juveniles. By late

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Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, despite being diagnosed with early onset schizophrenia over

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Speaker 1: a year before, Morgan had yet to receive any treatment

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Speaker 1: for it. At first, Banissa was not determined to have

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Speaker 1: suffered from any type of delusional psychiatric disorder, but was

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Speaker 1: instead thought to have become complicit in Morgan's delusions through

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Speaker 1: a process known as shared delusional beliefs. This was said

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Speaker 1: to have been enabled through the unique and intense feelings

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Speaker 1: each other, which in a Nissa's case, was considered to

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Speaker 1: have been exacerbated by her parents' divorce and bullying at school.

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Speaker 1: As Alex Mar also noted, these shared feelings are thought

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Speaker 1: to have contributed to Morgan and Nissa developing a shared

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Speaker 1: perception of the world that only the power of them

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Speaker 1: could understand which in turn served to reinforce their unique perspective.

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Speaker 1: In September twenty seventeen, Nissa Were was judged not guilty

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Speaker 1: by mental disease or defect and sentenced to a minimum

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Speaker 1: of three years in a psychiatric hospital. This was later

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Speaker 1: extended to twenty five at her final sentencing on twenty

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Speaker 1: first December of the same year. Were was eventually released

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Speaker 1: four years later in twenty twenty one, under a series

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Speaker 1: of strict conditions that included a complete ban from all

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Speaker 1: social media. In October twenty seventeen, Morgan Geyser pleaded guilty

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Speaker 1: to attempted first degree murder, but was also found not

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Speaker 1: guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. In February

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Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, she was sentenced to spend her next forty

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Speaker 1: years in a psychiatric hospital. Morgan remains locked up under

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Speaker 1: psychiatric supervision. Without wanting to justify or conflate the experiences

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Speaker 1: of the three girls, or indeed dilute the severity of

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Speaker 1: the crime, it is possible to see in twelve year

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Speaker 1: old Morgan's and a Nissa's obsession with slender Man, a

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Speaker 1: desperate desire to be accepted and understood in a world

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Speaker 1: that seemed increasingly to want nothing to do with them.

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Speaker 1: For many of us, the transition from childhood to adulthood

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Speaker 1: is a perilous and treacherous journey, one that can often

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Speaker 1: leave us feeling dangerously cut adrift, as the illusory permanence

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Speaker 1: and innocence of childhood is lifted to reveal a more

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Speaker 1: complex world, far less fixed and certain than we had

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Speaker 1: once believed it to be. Though we might struggle to

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Speaker 1: know where we fit into this new world, most of

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Speaker 1: us will find our place in a world that many

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Speaker 1: collectively hold in common. Some will forge their own paths,

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Speaker 1: imagining new worlds into which others can follow where they

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Speaker 1: feel they belong. Some of us, however, are fated never

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Speaker 1: to find either. After news broke of the Posies are incident,

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Speaker 1: an almost inevitable moral panic ensued, the desperate human urge

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Speaker 1: to find a reason for how and why something so

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Speaker 1: terrible could happen, followed by the all too predictable pointing

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Speaker 1: of the finger at the first bogeyman that could be found.

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Speaker 1: Walkeshire Police Chief Russell Jack urged parents to restrict and

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Speaker 1: monitor their children's Internet usage with one Australian news agency,

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Speaker 1: declaring creepy pastor an Internet horrorcult that almost caused a killing.

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Speaker 1: Many other media outlets were quick to join in the hype,

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Speaker 1: only helping to fuel the legend even further. However, what

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Speaker 1: they found in slender Man was not the perpetrator, merely

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Speaker 1: a personification of their fear of the Internet. He was

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Speaker 1: the faceless city, of the faceless technology that has come

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Speaker 1: to dominate our lives, the haunting specter of a world

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Speaker 1: rapidly evolving and changing from the one we thought we

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Speaker 1: once understood. Maybe the police were right to urge parents

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Speaker 1: to limit their children's Internet usage, if indeed it is

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Speaker 1: leading us toward a disastrous end point, or, as some

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Speaker 1: contemporary thinkers argue, if such is our fate, better yet

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Speaker 1: to harness the speed of technological change to bring about

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Speaker 1: this end even sooner, since, after all, according to them,

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Speaker 1: it is only when we get to this moment that

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Speaker 1: will be able to start again and realize a better future.

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Speaker 1: It was critical theorist Benjamin Noise who coined the term

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Speaker 1: accelerationism in twenty ten, taking it from Rogers Alasne's nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty seven novel Lord of Light. The book drawing heavily

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Speaker 1: on the mythology of Hinduism and Buddhism tells the story

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Speaker 1: of a planet colonized by the last survivors of Earth,

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Speaker 1: who have gained control over its native inhabitants by using

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Speaker 1: technology to turn themselves into gods based on Hindu mythology.

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Speaker 1: In this guise, the Earthling come God's hoard technology to

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Speaker 1: suppress the planet's indigenous races. One former Earthling, known as Sam,

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Speaker 1: the last Accelerationist, effectively plays out the role of Buddha

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Speaker 1: by rejecting the status quo. Believing technology should be available

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Speaker 1: to all. It begins to revolt against its godlike compatriots,

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Speaker 1: and eventually succeeds in claiming technology for the masses so

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Speaker 1: they can escape their subjugation. Although there are a number

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Speaker 1: of approaches to the idea, the roots of accelerationism can

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Speaker 1: be traced back to the early nineteen nineties to an

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Speaker 1: extraordinary academic group known as the Cybernetic Culture of Research

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Speaker 1: Unit or CCRU. The collective saw the capitalist model, specifically

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Speaker 1: as inseparable from self propelling technology, arguing that the two

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Speaker 1: should be accelerated since they were already unstoppable. Much like

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Speaker 1: the Bill Hicks joke in which he implores advertisers to

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Speaker 1: kill themselves, only for the advertisers to then become excited

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Speaker 1: at the prospect of being able to market his new

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Speaker 1: angry anti marketing persona. The members of CCRU believed that

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Speaker 1: the Internet is a slave to capitalism and all its worst,

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Speaker 1: most destructive features are a direct result of this. C

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Speaker 1: CRU first spawned in Warwick University's philosophy department sometime in

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Speaker 1: October nineteen ninety five, primarily led by renegade philosophers Sadie

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Speaker 1: Plant and Nick Land, a leading proponent of the concept

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Speaker 1: of hyperstitions, as explored in Chapter two of The Unexplained Book.

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Speaker 1: They were described in a nineteen ninety eight article by

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Speaker 1: music journalist Simon Reynolds as occupying an uncanny interzone between

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Speaker 1: science and superstition. As writer Andy Beckett put it in

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Speaker 1: a twenty seventeen Guardian newspaper article, their intellectual esthetic owed

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Speaker 1: as much to Land's deep fascination with the occult and

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Speaker 1: h belove crafts CTHULEU Mithos as it did to the

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Speaker 1: work of pioneering post structuralists Shield LUs and Felix Gatari.

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Speaker 1: To their detractors, operating beyond the normative expectations of academic practice.

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Speaker 1: Their work was too thin in research and amounted to

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Speaker 1: little more than a highly intellectualized game of cultural pattern

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Speaker 1: recognition to Enthrall, to pop culture and Alister Crowley, they said,

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Speaker 1: Yet for the five manic years that CCRU was active,

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Speaker 1: they produced a vast emporium of works and ideas. Today

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Speaker 1: those ideas form the bedrock of some of the most radical,

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Speaker 1: challenging and terrifying ideas in philosophy and cultural theory, with

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Speaker 1: much of it being dispersed through their wants defunct but

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Speaker 1: now thankfully archived website ccru dot net. To the uninitiated,

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Speaker 1: such as myself, stumbling upon cec ru dot net is

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Speaker 1: akin to being a crew member of the Nostromo from

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Speaker 1: Ridley Scot's alien, stepping foot into the strange, abandoned spaceship

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Speaker 1: of the enigmatic Engineers for the first time. Like many

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Speaker 1: forgotten websites, cut off from the present bloodline of the

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Speaker 1: active net, there's a sense of stumbling upon an ancient relic.

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Speaker 1: The words comprised of an almost impenetrable loose circuitry of

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Speaker 1: cryptic phrases and insider references feel at once both arcane,

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Speaker 1: while simultaneously as though they have been delivered to us

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Speaker 1: from the future. They warn us darkly and spell like

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Speaker 1: of the impending apocalypse. There is the sense too, that

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Speaker 1: perhaps they've been entombed and buried in the bowels of

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Speaker 1: the intert for a reason, as if they are too

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Speaker 1: dangerous to be allowed out lest they conjure into existence

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Speaker 1: the very thing they are warning us about. Only having

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Speaker 1: read them, do you realize with horror that it is

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Speaker 1: too late. The words are very much alive, and something

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Speaker 1: has got out, the true horror being the realization that

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Speaker 1: we may already be living through the exact apocalypse they

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Speaker 1: were trying to warn us about. Take these passages, for example,

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Speaker 1: from a piece titled cyber Hype six Dark Side of

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Speaker 1: the Wave discussing the inevitable boom bust cycle of capitalism.

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Speaker 1: Social innovation requires that existing arrangements and hierarchies are thrown

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Speaker 1: into disorder and shattered, and in the depths of the

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Speaker 1: economic dark side, the world becomes a p for things

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Speaker 1: yet to come. It is here that disruptive technologies are spawned.

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Speaker 1: Where labor, capital and markets are cheap to acquire. The

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Speaker 1: high magicians of demand management try to prevent the new

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Speaker 1: economy from sliding into darkness, but it is already too

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Speaker 1: late for that. Even as the shadows thicken, something unimaginable

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Speaker 1: is arriving from the edges of the world. Everything is

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Speaker 1: always in flux, only now never before has that change

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Speaker 1: been so rapid and disorientating, and so Where others might

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Speaker 1: have heralded the digital Age as ushering in a bright,

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Speaker 1: utopian future, arriving just in time to fix humanity's greatest problems,

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Speaker 1: CCRU saw something far more disturbing to them. The digital Age,

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Speaker 1: when coupled with the capitalist instinct, amounts to nothing less

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Speaker 1: than the final phase of a capitalistic death drive, speeding

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Speaker 1: as ever nearer to some kind of great cataclysm, a

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Speaker 1: system that, rather than offering us weighs out, is in

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Speaker 1: fact accelerating us to a final and inescapable end point.

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Speaker 1: You've been listening to Unexplained Season six, episode twenty eight

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Speaker 1: The new Sphere Part two, the third and final part,

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Speaker 1: will be released next Friday, February seventeenth. If you enjoy

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Speaker 1: Unexplained and would like to help support us, you can

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Speaker 1: now do so via Patreon to receive access to add

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Speaker 1: three episodes. Just go to patron dot com Forward Slash

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Speaker 1: Unexplained Pod to sign up. Unexplained, the book and audiobook,

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Speaker 1: featuring stories that have never before been featured on the show,

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Speaker 1: is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes,

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Speaker 1: and Noble Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained,

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Speaker 1: including the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain smith.

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Speaker 1: Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show.

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