Dead Internet Theory, JFK & Trump Shooting with Joey Avery

Summary

Camp Gagnon Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: Camp Gagnon
Host: Mark Gagnon
Guest: Joey Avery (with Christos Papadopoulos and David)
Episode: Dead Internet Theory, JFK & Trump Shooting
Date: July 23, 2026

This episode dives into the "Dead Internet Theory"—the belief that much of the modern internet is automated, manipulated, and potentially weaponized—while reflecting on how this blurry line between reality and fiction shapes public perception, political events (including recent attempts on Trump's life), historic conspiracies like JFK’s assassination, and the growing power of synthetic media and AI deepfakes. The conversation is fast-paced, irreverent, and sharp, balancing skepticism, dark humor, and genuine concern about our digital reality.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Blurring Line Between Reality and Digital Fabrication

Timestamps: [03:16]–[14:33], [63:24]–[68:00]

• Dead Internet Theory Explained:
  Originating from a fringe forum in 2021, the theory posits that since about 2016, most of what we see online—posts, comments, even entire personalities—are generated or boosted by AI, bots, and coordinated campaigns. Only a shrinking fraction is authentically human.
• The Numbers Behind the Theory:
  • 2025: Bots comprised 51% of online traffic for the first time (Imperva Bad Bot Report) [11:36].
  • By late 2026, up to 90% of content may be "synthetic" (Europol) [12:10].
  • Over a third of new websites are AI-generated or AI-assisted [11:49].
• AI Engagement Farming:
  • Meme pages, promoted content, and even supposed "organic" comments are often paid for or generated [09:04], [09:57].
  • Marketing campaigns now run "deeply synthetic," including for musicians, creators, and influencers [08:31].
• Emotional Manipulation Algorithms:
  Discussion of how outrage and "rage bait" are algorithmically promoted (Facebook, Twitter) because they catalyze virality and engagement [18:46]–[20:15].
• Memorable Quote:

  “For the first time in a decade, bots outnumber human traffic by 1%. 51% of all the traffic happening on the Internet, according to the Imperva Bad Bot Report, is bots. That is shocking.” — Christos Papadopoulos [11:36]

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2. Psychological Effects: Skepticism, Cynicism, Apathy

Timestamps: [03:17]–[06:27], [58:03]–[72:28]

• How "Fake" Feels Real:
  Mark, Joey, and Christos note the existential confusion of living in a world where everything online feels suspect, yet the offline world still feels normal and manageable [03:17], [04:08].
• Algorithmic Radicalization:
  Research cited shows algorithms push moderate users into more extreme positions over time, reinforcing outrage and division [19:19], [19:52].
• Apathy as a Coping Mechanism:
  Exposure to relentless, emotionally charged or shocking news events (real or manufactured) leads to numbness or apathy:

  “You just see something, you’re like, ‘Oh, another shooting. Okay, all right.’... It just, like nothing matters anymore here.” — Christos [06:08]

• Skepticism vs Cynicism:
  Advice to cultivate skepticism (demanding evidence) rather than cynicism (assuming everything is a lie), and to use "probabilistic thinking" rather than binary judgment [68:27]–[69:59].
• Practical Tips:
  • Assign probabilities to claims, rather than instant judgments [69:00].
  • Cross-check stories with multiple sources to avoid AI echo chambers [70:07].
  • Manage mental health by “touching grass”—breaks from online life [67:10], [71:01].

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3. The "Dead Internet" in Action: Political Manipulation & False Flags

Timestamps: [29:49]–[49:54]

• Trump Assassination Attempt (2026):
  The shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner by Cole Allen and the subsequent immediate online pattern-finding—including a dormant Twitter account referencing "Cole Allen" created years prior—fuel suspicion and disbelief about reality [29:49]–[32:51].
• No One Believes the Official Story:
  Both left and right jump to alternate explanations: “Blaming a different group and just saying this is for sure what it is,” but no one blames the named perpetrator [37:32], [37:38].
  • Estimated 70–75% of Americans don’t believe the official story of the assassination attempt (stat shared around [38:02]).
• Historical Parallels:
  • Operation Northwoods (1962): U.S. military’s proposed false-flag attacks to justify war with Cuba, declassified in 1997 [38:04].
  • COINTELPRO: FBI’s secret surveillance/discrediting operations against civil rights leaders [39:36].
• Memorable Quote:

  “That to me is like the underlying thing here: things happen—the most documented assassination attempt in history—and most people don’t believe it.” — Christos [37:39]

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4. Deepfakes and Synthetic Reality in Election Meddling

Timestamps: [44:32]–[49:54]

• Slovakia (2023):
  Deepfake audio of journalist Monica Todova collaborating to rig an election, released during a media blackout, swayed the election and could not be refuted in time [44:32]–[45:02].
• U.S. Parallels:
  • 2026 Kentucky primary: Viral AI ad falsely depicts Thomas Massie in a "throuple" with progressive congresswomen, swaying older voters [45:25]–[46:32].
• Old People and AI Vulnerability:
  Discussion of the older generation’s inability to distinguish AI-generated content, with sometimes darkly humorous analogies [46:41]–[47:17].
• Fake Positive Ad Campaigns:
  Roy Moore’s Senate race manipulated by fake pro-Moore ads suggesting he’d outlaw alcohol—costing him moderate support [48:49]–[49:54].
• Takeaway:
  The spread/correction cycle is always slower than the emotional impact of the original (mis)information.

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5. Conspiracies Old and New: JFK, MLK, Epstein, Distrust by Default

Timestamps: [58:03]–[63:00]

• Widespread Distrust:
  Citing a Change Research poll (2025) where vast majorities (60–83%) believe in various government/media conspiracies, including the theory that the CIA killed MLK/JFK/RFK, Epstein was murdered, and news is controlled by elites [58:09]–[59:03].
• The “Liars’ Dividend”:
  Now that fakes are everywhere, anyone can claim any scandalous audio/video is a deepfake—making real accountability almost impossible [62:11].

  “Once deepfakes are real... anyone caught on camera doing anything that they don’t want to be doing can simply claim that the record is fake… the burden of proof is inverted.” — Christos [62:11]

• Pattern Seeking and Apophenia:
  Humans are psychologically wired to find patterns in chaos (apophenia), which can lead to both conspiracy thinking and the rejection of real patterns (skepticism vs denial) [65:18]–[66:46].
• Memorable Quote:

  “You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason into.” — Christos, quoting Christopher Hitchens [41:29]

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6. Coping and Moving Forward

Timestamps: [67:03]–[72:12], [77:46]–[78:03]

• Tools for Navigating Digital Chaos:
  • Differentiate skepticism from cynicism, and embrace uncertainty and probabilistic judgments.
  • Multi-source verification and avoid clickbait echo chambers.
  • Actively manage exposure to digital content for mental health.
• Ultimate Solution:

  “Go outside and love your family... right before you do, watch my special Joey Avery Live in San Francisco.” — Joey Avery [77:54]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “The antidote to being chronically online is, as they say, touching grass... and you watch a sunset and you’re like, yeah, maybe it is okay.” — Joey Avery [03:45]
• “If you’re not ideological, you are kind of looking at what’s going on and being like, ‘I see what you’re saying, I see what you’re saying.’ And if you can move that window…” — Joey Avery [19:52]
• “Anyone that has any type of slip up, like Morgan Wallen’s debacle... if that happened today, he’d just be like, ‘That’s not true.’ And it probably would be believed.” — Christos [63:13]
• “The correction comes after, but at that point it’s too late. And that’s just what it is.” — Christos [49:54]
• [On old people & AI:] “It’s like using a bazooka on a baby…” — Joey Avery [46:50]

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Important Timestamps

| Segment | Topic | Timestamp | |---------|-------|-----------| | Dead Internet Theory Intro | Theory explained | 03:16–07:53 | | Bot Traffic Statistics | Reports and data | 11:21–12:10 | | Outrage Algorithms | Moral words, radicalization | 18:46–20:15 | | Trump Shooting & Suspicious Twitter Account | Pattern-finding after event | 29:49–32:51 | | Historical US False Flags | Operation Northwoods, COINTELPRO | 38:02–40:08 | | Slovak Election Deepfake | Real-world AI political effect | 44:32–45:02 | | Widespread Distrust Poll | 80%+ believe conspiracy | 58:03–59:03 | | Liars’ Dividend Deepfakes | Fake/real collapse | 62:11–63:24 | | Coping With Digital Chaos | Skepticism, mental health | 67:03–72:12 |

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Episode Tone and Style

The episode is a blend of sharp conspiratorial banter and serious critique—irreverent, humorous, at times dark, ultimately pragmatic and focused on actionable skepticism. The hosts and guests needle each other's online habits and beliefs while reflecting on their own vulnerabilities to misinformation, always returning to the importance of real-world human connection and cautious engagement with digital “reality.”

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Final Takeaways

• We are living in an age where distinguishing truth from fiction online is harder than ever.
• Bots and AI-generated content shape not only what we see, but how we think.
• Emotional manipulation, polarization, and apathy are consequences of an algorithmic digital society.
• Skepticism, probabilistic thinking, media cross-referencing, and logging off are essential survival tools.
• Nothing replaces real-life connection and discernment—in a world where everyone is shouting, sometimes the wisest move is to go outside and touch grass.

Transcript

[Mark Gagnon]

Introducing Meta Glasses. You have questions. They've got answers.

[Joey Avery]

Hey, Meta, what's the capital of Peru?

[Mark Gagnon]

Lima. How do you say where's the restroom in Spanish? Donde esta Alvano?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Hey, Meta, is a hot dog a sandwich?

[Mark Gagnon]

Technically, no. Spiritually, yes.

[Joey Avery]

Hey, Meta, what should I do with my life?

[Mark Gagnon]

That's one of life's biggest questions. What do you think?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Ask anything.

[Mark Gagnon]

With the new Meta glasses.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

More than half of everything you encounter online right now was not made by a human, but by bots specifically targeting your psyche. A mysterious Twitter account posted the full name of an assassin two and a half years before he ever made his move. A foreign intelligence agency cloned a journalist's voice and used it to swing a national election. A quarter of the country believes that the most documented assassination attempt in American history was staged. And the people who benefit the most from all of this, the lies, the chaos, the doubt, the don't even have to create theories online anymore because we are churning it out ourselves. Today, we're going to lay out all the top stories, the theories, and show exactly how we got here to a confusing and chaotic virtual world that is ultimately messing with our reality. We're going to go through the data, the deep fakes, and the dormant accounts to find where reality stopped being something that we all agreed on and became something that we now struggle to even decipher the false flags that are being fabricated and circulated online. It is a strange time to be alive, and it's about to get a whole lot stranger. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. What's up, people? And welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Gagnon, and thank you for joining me in my tent, where every single week, we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world, from all time, forever and always. That is what I do here in the tent. But before we begin, I just want to say a few things. First off, thank you, dude. And lady, I want to say thank you for tuning into this episode. Every time you click on an episode of this podcast, you keep the lights on here in the campsite and you keep the fire burning here in the tent. And real quick, I just want to give a big shout out to my good pal, Christos Papadopoulos. He is the man on the ones and twos that keeps all the cameras running in this beautiful studio. How are you, Chris? What's up, Christos? No time, because we also have a very prestigious guest. His name is Joey Avery. How are you?

[Joey Avery]

Great to be here, Mark.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I mean, truly one of the regular, regular Guests of the show, and I would say the MVP guest of the year. We got to start throwing out guest of the year.

[Joey Avery]

I feel like I would be in heavy contention there. Yeah. Who else would you put up for that?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I don't know. Randall Carlson. He's an archaeologist. He knew a lot about, like, sacred geometry and stuff and the younger Dries impact theory. He was pretty smart.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah, but, dude, what about the vibes?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, I mean, that's fair. As far as vibes, you were cracking me up way more than he does.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah. 100%, dude.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Now we have a very fascinating episode. Also, my pal David's here, but he's drinking a cold brew. Now this is an interesting episode that I was chit chatting with you about before. This is going to kind of go all across the board here. Okay. And the thing that kind of I that. That hooked me on to really deep diving into this is dead Internet theory. Are you familiar with this?

[Joey Avery]

I am now.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I guess before we even jump into that. How real do you feel like reality is? Do you. You feel like it's broken down.

[Joey Avery]

What a question. How real do I feel? Like reality. Like reality. Like if I, like, like my perception of reality.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Don't you feel like you go online and just doesn't feel like anything's real? Like people are mad and then you meet people in real life and they're not mad, and then people are concerned about something in, like, your hometown that no one's talking about and on the Internet, and you're like, what is actually real?

[Joey Avery]

Yeah. I feel like the antidote to being chronically online is, as they say, touching grass. And when you, like, go outside, like, because you online and you're like, everyone is an idiot and everyone is saying crazy stuff and the world is falling apart, and then you go out and you see a friend and you meet a stranger and you watch a sunset and you're like, yeah, maybe it is okay.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

No, there's a few antidotes, actually. And I think at the end of the episode, I have kind of like my sort of little, I guess, checklist for how to like, not completely lose my mind, but I guess more the phenomena that things are. Yeah, exactly. Zinn and cold brew will kind of level you out. And now lately, Ultra shout out to y'. All. It's a great new. That was great new pouch. No nicotine, actually in those. You can just take them all day and you feel great. No jittery crash afterwards. Anyway, this feels sponsored.

[Joey Avery]

20% off with the code.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Actually, it is. If you go to tri.ultra.com. anyway, it doesn't matter. But I. I just think that there is a moment where, like, it just feels like things aren't real. And I will talk to people that existed even pre, like, 2017, and they're like, yeah, the Internet used to be fun. I used to be like, you would go on Reddit or you go on Facebook and it would be like, for you.

[Joey Avery]

How about Ebomb's World?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, dude.

[Joey Avery]

Bombs World Fire 2D games.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

100%, dude. Like, the early Internet had a. It had something about it that was just innocent.

[Joey Avery]

I talk a lot about this in my current set, on the road joey. Every.com while we're doing plugs. But that. But it really. It did. I think when the Internet first came out, there was, like a feeling that it was going to save the world. And now we've come so far that it feels like everyone feels like it's destroying the world.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. I mean, I will say technology, like the Internet, as well as like, AI and kind of virtually everything else, smartphones, like, basically any massive categorical innovation, I think bifurcates the human experience so it makes it almost equal directions better and worse at the same time.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

So it's like, I can have a career. I can tell people about my show and my dates and the, you know, promote Ultra. I can do all of that because Internet. But also, I don't know what to believe. I feel like I'm in, like, just a persistent state of malaise. I have, like, kind of just apathy about, you know, terrible events. This is something Sanchez talks about all the time. He's like, I need a. A war to really even get me fired up or I don't even think a war would work.

[Joey Avery]

You must be a pig. And you've really come to the right era.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Like, you just see something, you're like, oh, another shooting. Okay, all right. Oh, this congressman was, like, assaulting everyone. All right. Like, it just like nothing matters anymore here.

[Joey Avery]

Random optimistic spin on that. Will that make the incentive to do horrible things potentially go down because nobody even fudgeing cares anymore?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

That's a great point.

[Joey Avery]

It used to be like, we're going to do this horrible event to shock people, and now it's like, oh, okay, well, you made a backpack explorer. Who cares?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

You're a copycat.

[Joey Avery]

Who cares?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

You've seen it before. Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

Why don't you make. Why don't you go paint?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, right. That is a good point. We knew the trench coat mafia, right? I don't Know any of these new mafias popping off?

[Mark Gagnon]

No.

[Joey Avery]

No one gives a shit.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Now, if you feel like the Internet is falling apart and that you know, your grip on reality is holding on by a thread, you're not alone, because there's many people that have felt this. And one of the major attributing, I guess, features of it is potentially this Dead Internet theory. Now, if you don't know what it is, let me break it down. Basically, the idea first started to percolate on a fringe Internet forum in like 2021. And it was, I. I like. Okay, so it actually was, I think, posted in January 2021 on this place called Agora Rhodes Macintosh Cafe.

[Joey Avery]

Okay.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

This is like this obscure forum for like lo fi, hip hop and like vaporwave stuff and like the occasional conspiracy theory. Pretty sure they'll hang out. And there's a user called Illuminati Pirate, and basically he has this thing titled the Dead Internet Theory. Most of the Internet is fake. And the core claim is that the Internet died around 2016, 2017. And when you scroll now on the Internet, the Internet is just bots and AI. And he argued that these networks coordinated with corporations and governments to turn users into, quote, submissive consumers, calling it an AI powered gaslighting of the entire world population.

[Joey Avery]

My question would be, is he saying that governments worked together on it or just by each government trying to introduce bots for their own sake, it's led to a preponderance of them?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

It doesn't specify.

[Joey Avery]

I don't imagine we worked with Russia on it, but if Russia's like, hey, let's get a bunch of bots that make Americans pissed about their politics and we, you know, have a bunch of bots going over to Russia. Yeah, I think, dude, your vodka sucks you.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Exactly.

[Joey Avery]

I think whatever fires them up.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, I think that's more the claim is it's like our government has bots that are running to push their agendas and maybe even like rogue agents within government parties, like, and even a step further.

[Joey Avery]

Now I've been seeing some articles about bands and social media influencers that have hired PR firms that basically push their content out there so it can feel like they're everywhere.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Right. You're referring to geese here.

[Joey Avery]

I know, I just, I did that because David is pissed off in the corner. But it isn't just geese. Other. Other people too. But yes.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Now in my opinion, I think it's completely overblown because it's like, yeah, they just did digital marketing. In the age of digital marketing, that we exist in is not on billboards and tv. It's on your phone. It is like, matriculating through all different types of, like, meme pages and stuff.

[Joey Avery]

I read that article and I wasn't like, oh, geese sucks. I was like, oh, this PR firm slaps.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And I would hire them.

[David]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

This is the.

[Joey Avery]

It's not illegal. This is the game we're playing. I mean, even going further back, this. The whole Andrew Tate thing initially was like, okay, his account was banned. He wasn't even posting his own shit. He had a bunch of incel dorks to follow him and be basically gamified. You have to post my clips now.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

The clips were good.

[Joey Avery]

That's why they worked. Yeah, but you shit pump them everywhere. And the algorithm's like, oh, everyone's talking about this 100%.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. Now, I would even go to say that, like every meme page you follow, like, I would say like, half to, like, 70% of the content is paid for.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Even the content that feels organic and fun. And you're like, oh, this is. They're just posting this because it's interesting. It's like, no, they're posting because, like, the management team of this rapper paid them to post it. And maybe it's a good piece of content, like, ontologically, but it's often so see through too.

[Joey Avery]

It's a lot of times it's like, oh, my God, bro. Snapped off on this one. And it's like, who? What?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Who cares?

[Joey Avery]

What really pisses me off is it's even wedged into, like, AI. If you're asking Chat GPT for recommendation. What's the best restaurant? Ooh. For a guy like you. How about this? Secretly that restaurant was funding.

[David]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

They're trying to us.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, dude. Now, dead Internet theory will go farther to say that even the accounts that you're interacting with are fake. So, like, all of them. You're in the comments.

[Joey Avery]

She loves me.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

No, no, no, no, no, no.

[Joey Avery]

What?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Nope, nope, nope.

[Joey Avery]

You're Consa.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

You're a little.

[Joey Avery]

My Colombian princess.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Your little Snapchat AI is not real. Okay, F. And these are the women in your DMs.

[Joey Avery]

All right? What?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yes.

[Joey Avery]

That's not possible.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

It is possible and it actually is verified. And I'm going to pull up this stat in a second. But basically the claim is that, like, over 50% of the people that you're dealing with on the Internet are actually not people. They're just AI.

[Joey Avery]

Think 50% is high.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Well, I'm going to prove you wrong. So In September of 2021, the Atlantic's Caitlin Tiffany published this article in the Atlantic. Maybe you missed it, but the Internet died five years ago. And she went on in the article to say that it was ridiculous, but then close it up saying it's wrong, but it feels true. Which is interesting framing. Now, April 2025, there's something called the Imperva Bad Bot Report. And this is a firm owned by the defense contractor Thales. And for the first time in a Dale T H AL S. Okay, just pull them up.

[Joey Avery]

Sounds like someone with a lisp who fails in sales.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Sales.

[Joey Avery]

I'm in sales. I mean, I mean, I'm in sales and marketing.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Wait, do you have a list? He's like, no, I work for sales.

[Joey Avery]

I work for sales. Sales. I'm one of the best sellers. Coffee for clothes.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Okay, now you do have a legendary. So for the first time in a decade, this Imperva Bad Bot Report bots outnumber human traffic by 1%. 51% of all the traffic happening on the Internet, according to the Imperva Bad Bot Report is bots. That is shocking. Now, there's another study. Stanford and Imperial College of London and the Internet Archive also did that. They did another sort of independent study. Over 35% of new websites are now AI generated or AI assisted. Nearly 18% are fully AI made with no human author. So now the sites are 35% AI or AI assisted. And then the people engaging with these sites and the comments and the reviews and the people upvoting and downvoting, those are also AI. So now you're just interfacing in this fake matrix world. And Europol also did this. By the end of 2026, up to 90% of online content may be synthetic. Pretty crazy. Alexis Ohanian from Reddit. Reddit co founder called the modern Internet dead.

[Joey Avery]

Damn.

[David]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Serena Williams husband, bad boy. Yeah, and he basically blamed quasi AI LinkedIn slop in a recent post. Now, the original version of this had like a conspiratorial tone that the government and corporations were deliberately flooding the web as a social control mechanism to get people to buy stuff. I don't put it past them. Yeah, it's not really.

[Joey Avery]

It's not really able to be proven, like, yeah, do. Do we. There's a zero percent chance that the CIA or whatever hasn't tried influencing thoughts with bots. Thoughts with bots, yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Another great website coming.

[Joey Avery]

Bot thoughts.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Exactly.

[Joey Avery]

Well, and you know, that's. I guess AI porn is probably a good thing, you know.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I go back and forth on that. I'm like.

[Joey Avery]

Because then what do we do with all the damaged people?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Exactly.

[Joey Avery]

Where are they supposed to work?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Just an Amazon workshop.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah. Yeah. That's no fun for them.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

But I'm like, on the one hand, I'm like. It drifts into like, okay, you can make anything ever. I'm like, yeah, that's not.

[Joey Avery]

That's just gonna break your brain.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

That's gonna break your brain. But at the same time, you're not exploiting women right in this. You know that women are not in these cycles of exploitation.

[Joey Avery]

But then it's like, if we want to go down this, it's like, are they really being exploited? If they're consenting sex workers who enjoy their craft of getting absolutely pummeled and squirting on their she.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Unfortunately, I think the nature of capitalism and the market that we live in is what is exploiting them and us. Rise up, comrades. Anyway, now, the original tone is conspiratorial, all right? Like, they're saying that it's a conspiracy, but the real data does show that there is, like, cheap AI and ad fraud and engagement farming at a massive scale, bigger than we've ever seen. Or maybe you could even, like, really predict, like, by the end of 2026, allegedly 90% is going to be completely made up. And this came from 2021 on a random forum. Pretty wild.

[Joey Avery]

Has anyone tried to track down that person? I mean, it could have just been a guy with, like, a decent idea who, like, saw where it was going, like, you know what I mean?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. And I think he's completely right.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I mean, not completely right, but, like, largely right. Especially two years before I was even in, like, the mainstream.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah. Because it wasn't at that time that easy to throw it out. But now it's like, it just. It seems like at the rate things are happening, in a year, everything's going to look completely different.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. Now, to add on to that, there's another weird little ripple on this. And this is something that came up through Twitter, sort of publishing the locations of all these Twitter accounts that you have people that run, like, you know Tim Maga.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah. You know, 2050, made in America. Exactly.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Like, I love American. They rage bait like crazy. They post just, like, pictures of black people and they're like, who would elect this guy? Like, it's just like racist rage baiting, like, insane shit. And then based in Ukraine. Yeah, yeah. That accounts in Ukraine, is in Pakistan, it's in India. And my assumption there is. It's perhaps governments But I also think now that there is a financial incentive on Twitter, aka x.com, that you're getting this perverse incentive for people to just basically create rage bait content to piss off Americans for money. Right?

[Joey Avery]

And they. Yeah, they get that money. But think about how much fun it would be to just be a fudgeing Pakistani dude. Like, I've gotten mugger, you know, just posting crazy shit all the time.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Because we could flip it on and we could be like, hey, we're going to be, like, big, like, modi guys. Just, like, just pump Modi content. Just rage. Just enrage everyone else in India.

[Joey Avery]

Israeli comedy.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, exactly. You could do that. You could do that.

[Joey Avery]

But Mo. Yeah, no, that would be funny. I think the only problem with. With most Americans is we don't actually know enough about the politics of any other place to do it effectively.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, unfortunately. But it'd be worth Bob and Van. Yeah, they love that.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah. Who you voting for, Bob or V?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

It's like, oh, man. Oh, it's a tough one. Now, the dead Internet section proves that most web traffic isn't human. All right, Based off of these reports, if we take them at face value, and I do.

[Joey Avery]

But I think that there's some level of, like, I imagine sophistication is getting better. But there's also stuff that we all immediately recognize as, like, bot bullshit. Like, if you go to the comments section on one of those meme pages you mentioned, and it's just like, a million photos of the same girl's ass being like, you better not watch my story unless you want to come.

[David]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And it's just like, 100 of those on, like, a video of, like, a car crash or something.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And. But for every 100 of those, I do think there are some that are sophisticated enough to p people in. And maybe, like, I've seen some that are really clever where, like, someone will comment on, like, an episode that I do, and a guy talks about, like, how, like, mushrooms saved his life, and now it's going to be in the comments of this video. But, like, people being like, dude, mushrooms like, really cured me of all my anxiety and ptsd. And then a comment underneath from a different account will say, oh, where'd you get them from? And he's like, oh, I got him from here.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Now all those comments in the thread are fake.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

But it feels real to the point where I was reading being like, oh, maybe I should. Wait, hold on.

[Joey Avery]

What's happening?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

This is absurd. Now, bad bots, the ones that are malicious and, like, Mimicking, like, human behavior hit 37% of traffic in 2024, up from 32%. This is the sixth straight year of growth. And if the trend holds, it's only going to grow more and more. And you know these machines, they kind of want you angry. Like, the algorithms want you to be pissed off. They want you to keep on scrolling. And outrage is one of the most reliable fuels to do that. So rage bait was actually Oxford's 2025 word of the year. And the usage of that word, rage bait tripled, and content built to provoke anger also is multiplied, like, significantly. And it's not just a vibe. There's a 2017 Princeton NYU study of 5, 563, 312 tweets found each moral emotion word boosted a post spread by 20%. A 2025 replication of 8 of basically a million confirmed this same exact finding that, like, emotional, like, moral emotion words is the thing that's going to boost it. So think of, like, a moral emotion word. Like, you must, like, you'd be on the right side of history. These types of things, like, wrap people up.

[Joey Avery]

Right?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Like, saving our country, save your children. Like, these types of things is ultimately, like, what makes things spread. So of course, things that are more salacious are going to spread around the Internet.

[Joey Avery]

But at this point, everything's become a reality show.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, in a way. Right. And there's even more studies to, like, back this up. So. 2021 Yale study, 12 million tweets from 7, 000 users. Found people. Found people rewarded with likes for outrage, lean to post more outrage over time. So you post something that's a little outrageous, and then you just become more and more outrageous and you get caught in the.

[Joey Avery]

We're all getting trained by the algorithm. You learn what works, you lean into that, and you keep going.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. And unfortunately, politically moderate users in that study were the most sensitive to that reward. So the system radicalizes the middle most effectively.

[Joey Avery]

Interesting.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

Because you don't have as much of a belief, so it's easy to get pulled one way or another.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, I'm. I'm presuming, like, you're, like, the most. I mean, one. It's like the biggest chunk of the population. I think most people are in the moderate section. And those are the people that are, like, probably the least, you know, gripped by their identity and, or like their beliefs.

[Joey Avery]

If you're not ideological, you are kind of looking at what's going on and being like, I see what you're saying, I see what you're saying. And if you can move that that window.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. And Facebook had a leaked document and it found that it weighted angry emoji reactions 5x to the plain literal thumbs up. So if you got like one angry, that was worth five likes.

[Joey Avery]

Basically entertainment is built to make you feel something.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

It's just crazy. And then there's another one. So 2024 scientific report study that the extinction rebellion protest found that during heated periods, bots influenced humans more than humans influence bots. So users who interact with bots turned measurably more negative afterwards. And this idea of astroturfing.

[Joey Avery]

Well, yeah, no, bots don't have an interaction with humans and are like, what is my purpose? Why have I been so angry?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

But in is you can deal with AIs to like make them become a little bit more negotiable. But.

[Joey Avery]

But that would come down to the person who's training them and the exact who's trying to generate rage is not going to do that.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Exactly. So like you have these bots that are specifically cranked up in volume and manufacturing this fight in the comments to make things seem more crazy than they actually are.

[Joey Avery]

So obviously I hate this and I think it's bad for society, but have we considered making our own bot armies?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Oh, for what?

[Joey Avery]

To tell everyone to chill out? Do the chill box tell everybody. Like, hey, just so you know, most, most of these things are bots, including me. And you should probably wonder why the most inflammatory language is getting your mental dick so hard.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, I mean this is kind of a small little bot army right here, right? 100. You, me, Chrisos, David, the thoughts. Yeah, exactly the thoughts.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah. The fails team.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Now, what's crazy is that Facebook is kind of at least like tacitly admitted that this is a part of what's going on. So the companies publish the numbers straight up. Meta removed 100 million plus Facebook pages in 2024 for fake engagement and impersonation. And then 500,000 accounts actioned for fake spam engagement. 10 million profiles removed for impersonating. Real creators and meta named this tactic plainly networks that hijack comment sections with scripted comments and follows and then began hiding comments flagged as coordinated. And that's just what they caught. Yeah. Which is just crazy because now that these things are getting, they'll learn how

[Joey Avery]

to get around it. I will learn how to avoid the, you know.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. Hey guys, I just want to take a break really quick to tell you about Cash app. I love Cash app.

[Joey Avery]

I use it all the time.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

If you know anything about me, I Try to make my life less chaotic because I travel a lot, I got kid, I got a wife, and I'm just doing stuff. I'm buying coffee, I'm just living my life. And Cash App makes it so easy. And it just makes my everyday life moments super simple. And the Cash App card is super cool because it's not just a boring debit card. It's not something that your dad got from a Bank in 2002. You can customize it, add it to your digital wallet and boop it everywhere and use it for just everyday spending. If I could pick my perfect Cash App discount, I'd probably do like, coffee, airport food, and I even customize my card so it has like a little, you know, camp logo on it. It's pretty sick. If you weren't up to speed already, Cash App is way more than just a safe to send and receive money. With the Cash App card, you unlock perks without all the hidden fees, including discounts on everyday purchases and popular brands you are probably already spending money on. Add your card to your digital wallet to make your money moves easier. Cash App also adds security to your money by declining suspicious card transactions and sending you a notification to make sure the payment is really you. If your card is ever lost or stolen, you can lock it with just one tap right on the app. Spend with confidence with the Cash App card today. And new Cash App customers can earn $10 if they use the code CASH APP10, I.e. cASHAPP10 in their profile at signup and send $5 to a friend within 14 days. Terms apply. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton bank member fdic. Visit Cash App Legal podcast for full disclosures. Thank you so much for Cash App for supporting the show. Now let's get back to it. So there's a really interesting study from this guy, Joseph Bodnar that we're going to talk about later. But he puts the point pretty plainly. He says something that hostile actors don't have to invent outrage anymore. They can find domestic voices and then amplify them. So now you can amplify these people that are already doing this. And so you have like these fake, you know, the fake crowd is the delivery system. So bots don't need to convince you of anything. They can just flood the zone with so much conversation around a topic to make this manufactured consensus feel like the most logical, inevitable outcome.

[David]

Come.

[Joey Avery]

Wasn't there something that proved that that Kind of happened with Nick Fuentes to some degree.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

In what way?

[Joey Avery]

I believe there was a lot of bot traffic that, like, helped elevate him to becoming. You know, obviously he was a fringe voice, but then he was someone that everyone kind of started talking to. And a lot of it apparently seemed to be boded traffic during a certain period. Now, from who?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

For what reason?

[Joey Avery]

Was it him? Was it an actor who was just like, hey, here's a guy who's got a charisma but is saying crazy things that will, you know, push the American political system to its seams? Let's give it a whirl.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. And who is the one that is pushing that?

[Joey Avery]

Right.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And like, I think, like, particular is

[Joey Avery]

backed by Peter Thiel.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Allegedly.

[Joey Avery]

Don't mean that literally.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I mean, he wishes, dude. Which I think the theory with that is like, Peter Thiel is like, down with transhumanism, and it's cool. I mean, we talked about pure till quite a bit on this. We did, we did. And I think he's down with transhumanism. So he's like back in the enhanced

[Joey Avery]

games, he's just not down with transhumans, folks. But he's like. But, you know, he's kind of like post. Like post humanity, post sexual. Which is where clavicular is perfect because he's like, dude, just have a smooth face and never. Yeah, it's like the idea of enhance

[Christos Papadopoulos]

your body as much as possible using whatever it takes. Yeah. And then how long until clavicular uses a microchip? And then it's like, oh, nice. Okay, well, this is pretty easy. We can convince all these kids, like, microchips are hot.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah, basically.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And then the enhanced games basically doing the same thing, just getting these guys

[Joey Avery]

failed it to a large degree, people. I mean, it was just. Yeah, what's up?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

PR wise.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah. I mean, I think that just in terms of intrigue, it was just like there was a concept and then it didn't come to fruition. They didn't get the world records. The ones they did were a little sus. A bunch of clean athletes won. And also I think with the enhanced games, I like the idea because I grew up steroid era. Barry Bonds, greatest ever play baseball. Absolutely loved it. But we don't want to watch the people who aren't the best in the world on steroids. See what they can do. Like, you want to see what happens when the best of the best best are doing cool stuff. But, like, running and swimming aren't interesting to watch. The reason we watch The Olympics are. Because A, they're the best and B, we care about our countries.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

You know, if you're watching some like someone who couldn't make the Olympics and is trying to drug their way back to the mean, it's just kind of like. And they're just swimming in a pool full of piss in Vegas.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

It's like whatever, it does have the. But it is kind of like indicative of just like vc.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Like art or like VC events.

[David]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

You know this is the VC version of art. Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Where it's like all these like VC companies being like, hey, we're not gonna have a story. This like product that we're gonna sell isn't gonna be like a grandma that tried to make it in our yard. Like that's what people wanted like 20 years ago. Now they're just like, hey, we put in all the money and we're gonna make the best possible thing and then we're gonna just sell it for as much money as we can, depending on

[Joey Avery]

what the thing is. That's good.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Well yeah, but like, like a bowl shop that opens up down the street and they sell protein bowls.

[Joey Avery]

Right.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Like there was a time where it was like this started this.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah, that's done.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And now it's like, no, we just found a way to give you the best food as cheap as possible and that. And we're going to exit.

[Joey Avery]

But I think that the human reaction to that is to go back to

[Christos Papadopoulos]

the other thing, which is kind of funny because we, I mean, to an extent are getting good products from these VC companies.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah. But then everyone don't give me slop. And they're like, it's, I swear to God, it's the best. Like you're going to get at a mass scale.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

But I think that there's, I mean there's a place for both. Like maybe you eat your slop on a Tuesday at noon because you have 10 minutes on your lunch break at your VC. But you know, on the weekend you kind of want to get your Anthony Bourdain on and like go to a place that means something and maybe they use a tortilla that has some friggin chemical in it. You don't, like you don't give a shit because they've been on the corner of that block for a hundred years and you feel like you're connected to history and you're being a human and that's the thing.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And that's nice to do, you know, it makes you feel good.

[Joey Avery]

And then the VCs are like we're realizing there's a competitive advantage to actually having a 300 year old restaurant helmed by an old Mexican lady. So we've mass produced Mexican ladies and we're putting them at every corner of America.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And they're all 500 years old.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah, they're all 500 years old. We have the oldest abuela. We have the oldest abuela that actually has ever existed.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

She invented the tortilla.

[Joey Avery]

She invented the tortilla. Theoretically, yeah.

[David]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I mean that's basically what it's going to take. But I think this is a bigger trend of just like kind of everything feeling fake. And one of the most recent things that everyone just kind of like glossed over was the recent assassination attempt on Trump in 2026 at the White House Correspondent's Den. The aftermath is very strange. So if anyone is doesn't know, which I'm shocked if you wouldn't. April 25, 2026, at the Washington Hilton. 31 year old named Cole Allen runs into the correspondence number with a 12 gauge shotgun and tries to swiftly. Yeah, he's, he was hoofing it. And it's a pack room. You got cabinet members, first lady, J.D. vance, all these journalists. And he fires. Hits the Secret service officer in the chest. The vest held and then the officer returned fire. Allen goes down. The President, the first lady are evacuated. They survive. Allen is arrested with a shotgun, a pistol, a bunch of knives and now facing life in prison. Now he's a 31 year old Caltech educated engineer and part time tutor from Torrance, California. What do you know about Torrance, California? Not a lot.

[Joey Avery]

It's outside of la, I believe. Oh damn, they got him in the blankie.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Why? Didn't put him like a baked potato. Had a part of it. All right, we're gonna wrap his pubes.

[Joey Avery]

What the hell is this?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

He traveled By Amtrak from LA to Chicago to D.C. checking to the Hilton the day before and then emailed his family 10 minutes before. Cole Cold Force Friendly assassin. And the weird part of this whole thing is that within hours of his name going public, people found a Twitter account from Henry MA 595-956-1893 that was created on December 2023. Pepe the Frog is the profile picture and the banner is from a site called Time Machine Europe.

[Joey Avery]

And not only that, but it is a Pepe the Frog in a tuxedo holding a wine glass, which some people feel Correspondency. Right?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And exactly one post with the name Cole Allen Posted on December 22, 2023, 2.5 years before the attack, and then nothing else. Now, within days, it gets like, 55 million views, like Rogan talks about on his podcast. And people are trying to understand what's happening. Like, how is this even possible? Like, what does any of this mean? And then people found Cole Allen's LinkedIn listed as a 2014 intern at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Now, the same year, NASA published an Orion spacecraft paper co authored by aerospace engineer Henry Martinez, matching the same account name on that Twitter account. Now, could be a coincidence. The NASA scientist Martinez and the NASA intern are both at JPL in the same year. Jet Propulsion Lab. And Martinez has this, you know, this different Martinez, or the same Martinez has a dormant account that says the name Cole Allen. Now, why is this happening? Like, Snopes traced the time machine banner to a unsplash stock photo circulating since 2021 from a psychedelics blog that used it. And then in 2022, now, people on the Internet say, you can't backdate a post on X. So this. The time stamp of this seems to be accurate, and it's very strange. So is it possible this was referencing a different tweet that's now deleted, and then that one tweet just stays up there referencing a different Cole Allen? It's not the most unique name in the world world, but it's just a strange ripple. And it's one of these things that I think also contributes to this feeling of, like, is anything real? Like, how does something happen? And then there's a corresponding thing. Is it just finding.

[Joey Avery]

And also the possibility of, you know, it's like the. If you get a. Whatever it is, if you get a bunch of monkeys on a keyboard, eventually they'll type an entire work of Shakespeare.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Right? Is that what it is? There's just enough stuff on the Internet where people are like.

[Joey Avery]

I do think there is a little bit of that where, like, we are built to perceive patterns, and we've never had as much easily searchable data before in our lives, so now we can just see a pattern wherever we want.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, that's true. And there's a. Actually a name for that that we're going to get to in a second. But it is just interesting to me that this stuff happens and everyone's just kind of like, all right. And no one really believes it.

[Joey Avery]

Like.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Like that. To me, the reaction is interesting.

[Joey Avery]

The assassination is every assassination with Trump. I mean, Butler doesn't even make sense. Like, the more we dig into Butler, it's like, wait, what?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. And that seems to be, like, the pivotal point in his election campaign, where it's like, oh, this guy's gonna win.

[Joey Avery]

And the.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And the way that they lowered the flag for the camera guys and all that, it's very, very, very strange.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Just all weird. And no one believes anything.

[Joey Avery]

I also. The most compelling thing I saw about the whole Butler one was, again, the details, and nothing has really, like, come out. Although the guy who left the administration, Joe Kent, I know, was basically saying he was not allowed to look into the Butler investigation further, which is interesting. And I saw some lady who was former MAGA on Twitter tweeting about it, and she was like. Like, this made the most sense to me. She's like, is it odd to anyone else that the pettiest person of all time has never brought it up ever again? And the first thing he said at his RNC speech was, I'm going to tell you this story once and I will never tell it ever again.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And she was like, that is a telltale thing you do when you're trying to cover something up or lie, because the hardest thing to do is keep a lie straight. So the idea that the pettiest person of all time who won't let go, like, if someone pushed him in gym class, like, 50 years ago, is like, but you can try to kill me, and I will never really look into who actually did it or tweak out about it ever again.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I mean, or even blame.

[Joey Avery]

Or even blame the left for, like, say that this guy was of the left and he was a lunatic. No, he's just let it go. That, to me, is the one thing that I'm like, that is the opposite of his behavior for his entire life. In every other arena.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

He did blame Iran at one point.

[Joey Avery]

He did for a bit, and then dropped it and bombed him. Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

So maybe he held on, but I'm like, how does Iran even get in touch with. With Matthew Crooks?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah. I don't know.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

What is the story with that? Like, how does that make sense?

[Joey Avery]

This one. There's a tweet that I kind of want to find about this last one.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And.

[Joey Avery]

And I. I don't mean to derail us, but it was one of the funniest tweets I've ever seen. And it was a. It was just like an analysis of this guy. Yeah. It was Captain Crunch on Twitter was just. It. It's a video of him running through, and he's just analyzing his attack plan. No smokes, no entry flash, no back of sight, PE WP from tunnel. Just straight P90 resh. B. Psychobliot. Dick first at mock. Basically, that was it, dude. Dick first at mock.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And if we trust, the official story, became centimeters away from doing it. Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And then.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Crazy.

[Joey Avery]

Immediately the texts went out because they have these like MAGA influencer group chats. And immediately the text went out and told everybody, start talking about the ballroom. Talk about the ballroom. And so you had a coordinated push from an entire side of the aisle that was like, let's use this to try and get a ballroom made. Because it's something the President cares the most about for some reason.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. And then. Well, that's apparently a data center and they're building all this surveillance stuff which

[Joey Avery]

we used to keep secret. Like, literally there's like a clip of him and he's like, we're going to build all the secret military things right beneath. I'm like, don't say that, dude, stop. He's like, we're going to do research.

[David]

Church.

[Joey Avery]

Aliens. Epstein's gonna live down there. Yeah, aliens. Everyone's just gonna live under the ballroom.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. And it just kind of came out, like, kind of said like, people, which again, is another conspiracy. People are percolating. They're like, oh, there's something else with this ballroom. And then Trump just basically confirmed it.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah, it's one of those things where like, either everything is a grand conspiracy or we're letting a crazy 80 year old run.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Maybe it's both.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah, maybe.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And it seems like most people within maga, maybe not most, but many people within MAGA also don't really support this theory. So, like, Tucker Carlson suggested that the FBI lied about the shooter's online footprint. Footprint. Marjorie Taylor Greene, until recently one of Trump's most loyal allies, posted multiple statements on X questioning the official story and accusing Trump of covering it up, saying that the entire thing doesn't smell, doesn't pass the smell test. Candace Owens blamed Miriam Adelson. This, you know, Israeli American billionaire and Republican donor of secretly orchestrating it. And so even people within like the coalition are now, or at least formally within the coalition at one point are now also being like, hey, this is all forgave crazy.

[Joey Avery]

And this is how everyone views everything. There was, I mean, a week ago there was another shooting at the White House. And I saw, I like, opened up the thread like, as it happened, and I swear to God, it was alternating comments. Radical left, lunatic, obviously, every time Trump's poll number slips, he gets shot. Clear. Conspiracy. This was definitely Israel. This was definitely Iran. Wink, wink. Says Netanyahu. It was literally every single group.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Group, yeah.

[Joey Avery]

Blaming a different group and just saying this is for sure what it is.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

But notice no one blaming the person that is confirmed by the report to have been the person that did it.

[Joey Avery]

It's too easy.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Which is just. That's a perfect crime. That to me is like the underlying thing here that things happen. The most documented assassination attempt in history, undoubtedly. And most people don't believe it. I have a stat in here somewhere. I gotta find it later. But like I think it was something like 70 to 75 of people don't believe the official story of. Of the either assassination attempt. Yeah. I think the one. The.

[Joey Avery]

For totally different reasons. Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And like some people blame the left and other people blame Iran and other people blame what? Like no one thinks it was just this guy acting alone, which is what the official report found. Right. And people would say like, oh well, there's no way that this would happen. You know what I mean? Like, like a false flag or somehow planting some type of fake thing to like change people's psychologies and like perpetuate this thing. That's not real. But there is some evidence. 1962, a U.S. joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking military officials in the country, drafted a top secret document called Operation Northwoods. You ever heard of this? It was signed by the chairman, Lyman Lemnitzer. And it laid out in bureaucratic sort of legalese a series of proposed false flag terrorist attacks against American citizens to be blamed on Cuba in order to manufacture public support foreign invasion. Invasion. Those proposals included sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, bombing American cities, shooting down a remote controlled plane disguised as a passenger plane, staging a fake attack on Guantanamo Bay. President JFK rejected the plan and the stock. The document specifically remained classified for 35 years until 1997 when it was then declassified.

[Joey Avery]

You can just feel how far the country has come where they thought that a false flag would be sinking a boat of Cuban refugees. Whereas these days the administration would do it and be cheered on.

[David]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Not even a false flag.

[Joey Avery]

No, it's. They've been blowing up boats.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, they just did that.

[Joey Avery]

They just say fentanyl.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And then invaded Venezuela. Yeah. Kind of crazy.

[Joey Avery]

That is insane.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And so. And that's not the only time. So you have that and then you have COINTELPRO, FBI's secret illegal program to surveil and discredit civil rights leaders exposed in 1971 when activists physically broke into the FBI office and stole the files.

[Joey Avery]

Right, right.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And then you have that.

[Joey Avery]

Because that's where they. They got. They caught Martin slipping.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. Wait, Martin.

[Joey Avery]

Martin Luther King Jr. Didn't they, like, frame him or, like, you know, monitor him?

[David]

Oh, yeah.

[Joey Avery]

Texting, a side piece.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

All of them were monitored. Like, all of them were monitored. And like, they attempted to discredit them, find anything on them.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

To be like, oh, yeah, these people are all unreliable. You can't trust them. These are bad moral actors. Like, throw them out. Crazy. And the government was, like, actively trying to do that. And those same.

[Joey Avery]

I have a dream that one day my real. In my. We'll be kept separate and the government will stay out of it. Let him cook.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Right?

[Joey Avery]

He's a great man.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. I don't think there's anything wrong. You can have a church peace and a state piece.

[Joey Avery]

Separation.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

Church and skeet.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. Church and street.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah. Yeah, there it is.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Church and street.

[Joey Avery]

Separation of church and street. 100. Back in the day. Everyone was doing it back then. Kennedy was doing it.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

Sounding like it was just him. Get the out of here.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. 41 of Americans that heard the theory that Democrats orchestrated the shooting, 53% have heard the theory that Republicans staged it themselves. And between like, 30 to 40% thought that one or the other was plausible. So more than a quarter of the country on either side is now operating from a baseline assumption that these assassination

[Joey Avery]

attempts were faked, which is how, you know, dead Internet theory has won because we've been pushed so far and radicalized so far. Or there's no amount of information that will change a lot of people's minds.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Right.

[Joey Avery]

Including me sometimes.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

Like, even that one. I'm like, I don't know what happened, but it seems weird.

[David]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I mean, to invoke Hitchens, you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason into.

[Joey Avery]

Ooh.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

You know, so if you just hear something, you're like, oh, that's feels right to me. No amount of data is going to make them be like, no, actually, I changed my mind.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

You're just going to stick with the thing that feels right.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Hey, guys, we're going to take a break really quick because I want to talk to you about gld. This is an awesome new company that we're working with that I'm actually wearing. Wearing right now. I actually got this crucifix right here. And honestly, even just getting it, you know, sometimes, like, when you work with some companies, you're like, all right, I really hope the product is good. This one is. I. I Wear it all the time. This is actually like the new crucifix. I lost my last one at a bath house. Literally, at a sauna. I lost my crucifix, which is maybe God's way of telling me something. But I got a new one from gld and I've been rocking it non stop. My wife likes it and it's got, like, a nice weight to it. The details actually look better in person. The clasp is, like, super solid. It doesn't feel like something you bought, like, in Times Square from a random dude. It doesn't feel like somebody ordered from, you know, some sketchy website on teemu. And they got everything. Chains, pendants, bracelets, watches. Whether you want something subtle or something that's like, yo, I just. I just signed a deal, you know, I mean, if you want like the record deal chain, they got that too. Now, if I haven't convinced you yet, let me sweeten the deal a little bit. All right? For a limited time, the listeners of this program, Camp Gagnon, Religion, Camp, History Camp, and the entire camp universe, you're getting a crazy deal. If you use the code camp c a m p when you check out, you're going to get 40% off your entire [e-mail]. that's 40% off your whole order with the code camp at checkout gld.com and after you purchase, they're going to ask where you heard about gld. Tell them you heard about them from, you know, the good folks here at the campsite, Mark and Christo sent you. And whenever you do that, it really helps, you know, support the show. And thank you so much to GLD and thank you to you for tuning in. Let's get back to the show now. There's another case that happened that is maybe the craziest ripple in this whole thing, in my opinion. But it didn't happen in America, so no one really knew about. It happened in Slovakia. And it's pretty wild. There's a journalist named Monica Todova. Todova is reporter at an independent Slovak newspaper named Dennick? N. And she's well known in her country. And according to research from the Investigative center of Jan Kushiak, she was the single most attacked journalist in Slovakia in the months leading up to the September 2023 parliamentary election. Election smear campaigns, hate speech, surveillance, all that stuff. And then two days before the election, they have something in Slovakia where you have like a silence period where you can't publish or, like, release articles relating to the election for two days to, like, create Silence. Someone releases an audio file and in it Todova could be heard having a phone call with a politician named Mikhail Simicheka Simacheka, the head of the Liberal Progressive Slovakia Party party. And they were discussing how the two of them could work together to rig the election. And they were like, look, we're going to buy votes from the Roma, we're going to manipulate ballots. And the crazy part, I was going

[Joey Avery]

to ask for a photo of her. I'm not going to lie. The whole time I was like, was

[Christos Papadopoulos]

she a piece and survey says she's

[Joey Avery]

a piece of corruption.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Well, that's what's crazy about this, is that the conversation that leaked never happened. Oh, it was an AI generated deep fake. And the audio was fully synthetic, but it was good enough. And the timing, two days before the vote fell within Slovakia's mand election coverage. Silence, period. Meaning that the press was legally prohibited from debunking it before the voters went to the poll.

[Joey Avery]

Because I, I literally was like, that sounds like such a good idea. And then I was like, but it's also such a downside too, right? There's so much green field to just drop a bomb. There you go.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Tens of thousands of people heard it before any correction could be issued. And then Semianka's party lost and they lost to a more pro Russian candidate named Robert Fico, who had been trailing the polls before this deep, deep fake circle surfaced.

[Joey Avery]

Now, I can only wonder if you're going to bring this back to AI in a very recent American election ad or do you want me to do it?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Why you do it?

[Joey Avery]

Okay. Did you hear much about the Kentucky race with Thomas Massie?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, I mean, Trump wanted out absolutely. Massey was going with, really

[Joey Avery]

wanted him out. And they actually, it became the most, I believe, the most expensive congressional election in American history because AIPAC spent a ton of money. And one of the key ads in it was an ad that used AI that was saying Thomas Massie was in a throuple with the squad. And so it showed him like checking into a hotel with Ilhan Omar and AOC and like if you're a mildly intelligent person, you're kind of like they're doing a metaphor or something.

[Mark Gagnon]

Wow.

[Joey Avery]

But the main people who broke for the candidate Trump installed, basically, who's no one's ever heard of, a lot of them were like, yeah, well, I liked Massey, but you know, he had that thing with those two women because they're like 70 year old people in Kentucky whose brains don't know how to process AI and they just fizzled out.

[David]

And.

[Joey Avery]

Wow.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Now, let the record show it's not just Kentucky that would fall for this. Like, this. This would probably work in any state in America.

[Joey Avery]

Oh, totally.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And by evidence of this, I mean, it worked in Slovakia. And those people.

[Joey Avery]

Smart. Yeah. It's just like, old. Like, AI is tough for everybody, but for old people, it's, like, truly unfair. Oh, yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I mean, I. I have some folks,

[Joey Avery]

like, using a bazooka on a baby, just like, what, literally? What do you mean?

[David]

That.

[Joey Avery]

That polar bear didn't save that penguin.

[David]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And hug it.

[David]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And then I've seen old dudes at coffee shops just listening to AI videos out loud, being like, no way.

[Joey Avery]

No way.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And I can. It's. You can obviously hear it's AI if you have any, like, literacy with the stuff. But, like.

[Joey Avery]

But you don't. Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

For him, he's just like, yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And there's gonna be weirder shit when we're old. We're gonna be cooked through in a new and weird, unfathomable ways.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I mean, we're already almost cook. There's a study that was done that shows how frequently people can detect AI voices in AI videos. And.

[Joey Avery]

Oh, it's bad.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

The results will shock you.

[Joey Avery]

It's. I think that the most helpful thing to do is, like, when something seems ridiculous, anything seems ridiculous. Just being like, if that doesn't feel real, it might not be.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. Now the question is, who released this audio footage? Like, that's completely anonymous, or, like, the audio file to, like, frame this person and the journalist and basically get them out of there? NATO Strategic Communication center of Excellence later noted that just over an hour before the deepfake went viral, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service issued a press release naming Semenka by name and accusing the US of trying to influence Slovakia's election.

[Joey Avery]

We did it.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

That's what. That's what Russia says.

[Joey Avery]

Oh, that is what Russia would say. Because they always say it's them, too.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And every interview that Todova gave afterwards, she had to start with the same explanation. This conversation is not real. That's not my voice. It is purely a fabrication. And no matter how many times she said it, there was a percentage of the population that heard the audio. And then the correction second. And the audio is what stuck. Wow. Now there's one that happened. This was in, like, a race in Alabama. It was Roy. What's that guy? Roy something.

[Joey Avery]

Oh, yeah, I forgot about him.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

That was. I forget his name. He had all sorts of crazy, I think, but he. This specific Case was interesting because it's not the exact same thing, but it's similar enough. It was documented in the Great Hack on Netflix, where also the name of your new special.

[Joey Avery]

Okay, my new special, Joey Avery Live in San Francisco. It's out on YouTube right now. Let's get it over 100k.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Oh yeah. Roy Moore.

[Joey Avery]

Yes.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

So basically there was this big election, right? I think it was this one in 2017. And there's a guy who went and you bought Facebook ads. Ads. And the Facebook ads, he was basically saying like, vote for Roy Moore because he's gonna make alcohol illegal in Alabama. Roy Moore is obviously like Republican, Christian, more conservative. And they were like, he's going to ban alcohol. And then all like the moderate right leaning people were like, hey, maybe we shouldn't vote for this guy because like we don't love Doug Jones the Democrat. Yeah, damn Democrat. But he's gonna at least let us have alcohol. And so by fake thing they were able.

[Joey Avery]

Fake positive ad is the best.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

They were able to push people to the left and vote for Doug Jones.

[Joey Avery]

Wow.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And based off the data that they published in the Great Hack, it was like he reached like something like 30 million people. Now it's probably closer, like 3 million or some shit. I think it was like 3 million people. And like if you could just influence one of them. This race was so close that like that 1% that might have been influenced by that Facebook ad would have been enough to flip the election.

[Joey Avery]

It's a race to the bottom.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Crazy. Right now the what's wild is that you have the correction that comes after but at that point it's too late. And that's just what it is. And it's interesting because like there's just this sort of like energy of I don't know, like skepticism, unbelief of anything on the Internet. At least that's how I feel. I just don't believe anything. Like I see stuff and I'm like, I'll engage with it. And I kind of like try to understand it but like I don't. I just, I can't believe anything.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Like someone like my mom will send me. Like my dad will be like, you see what mom Donnie did? And I'm like, whatever you are sending me, I'm just not going to believe off rip until I really like dig into it.

[Joey Avery]

And even like at a much lower stakes level, like my wife will show me like these people who do couples content. And I'm like, this is all staged.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

Like it'll be like oh, look, I'm gonna do this to my husband. He's like, oh, what are you doing back there? And I'm like, this is. He's a bad actor.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And then she's like, I'm not gonna

[Christos Papadopoulos]

show you anything anymore.

[Joey Avery]

I'm like, I'm so.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Well, that was on Facebook the most, like, you'll see like, an eight minute Facebook video of, like, me pranking my wife. And it's like seven minutes of him setting up this prank.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And then the wife is like.

[Joey Avery]

And it's that. And then there's the rage bait of, like, the health. She started watching this lady called Mother on. On Tick Tock. And she's just this crazy lady, and she just throws all these, like, things into a bowl and she doesn't cut anything. So she'll just throw like an entire gourd into a bowl with all these spices. And it masquerades like, this is how be healthy. And it's like, none of this is useful at all. It's just built to shock you.

[David]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, my God, I've never seen this before. And then you watch 10 videos and in your head you're like, why have I been cutting my squashes when I could just put them in here with a bunch of seasoning and turmeric? And like. And it's all.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, that's. I don't know. That's the part that, like. And it's terrible once you have a kid. I mean, the amount of content my wife gets where it's just like.

[Joey Avery]

Because, like, here's how you should be a mother.

[David]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And I told my wife something that I actually think is helpful advice because.

[Joey Avery]

Shut the up.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

No, I said, if you.

[Joey Avery]

Just kidding. We love you, ladies.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

If anything scares you on the Internet, see if they're selling something.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And if they're selling something, you don't have to listen to it. Yeah. Because there's so many times where it's like, if you're wearing these shoes, your child will have hip dysplasia. And then it'll show like a video of a kid like, in Fallujah with his legs blown off. And they're like, this is my. My kid because I wore these wrong shoes. And then you scroll enough through the carousel and it's like, buy these shoes with my promo code.

[Joey Avery]

And I'm like, anything they're selling. And it's built to pray off your emotions. And one of the emotions is, especially as a parent, I'm not being perfect. What am I up? Like, I want to be good at this and health is the same way. What am I doing wrong? How do I do this? And like, the actual advice is so simple. But simple doesn't sell. I can't sell you blueberries and tell you they're good for antioxidants. I don't have a code for blueberries. Yeah, but if it's a pill that you shove up your ass that only I make. Have you checked in on Liver King recently, by the way?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

No. How's he doing?

[Joey Avery]

Oh my God. So bad. He's doing the worst of anyone I've ever seen doing.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Can we check it out?

[Joey Avery]

It's so bad. He is. He is entered. I think like a drug induced psychosis of some kind. Some kind. As his engagement falls off, he just gets weirder and weirder.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Like his Instagram.

[Joey Avery]

His son is dropping a rap track. Now that's bizarre.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, click that.

[Joey Avery]

Not that one. Click the. I literally looked at his page yesterday because I was like, what's happening? Go to his page. I will show you.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

If you click on that, it'll take you.

[Joey Avery]

Right. Go to his Instagram and I'll. I'll give you a good. Because that's a collab post with his son. It's not as interesting as you think. Yeah, because that's old Liver King. What we need is modern day Liver King. Scroll down a little bit.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Any.

[Joey Avery]

Actually go to that one with that one with 1.2 million there.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Right?

[Joey Avery]

This will be a good. This will be a good. Because that's the best engagement he's got in a way while. But here's what he's up to.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Okay. He's walking through a club

[David]

early morning sun through the eyes on the face on SC get the bears connected, anchored, grounded into the earth Primal sets the way to do it. Life's a party and you can hate. You can hate me fine. Because I'm having fun and I inviting you to the same party. Here's what's most important. Here's the message I wanted to. This just happened. Someone was like, how's it going? And oh God, don't make me do that. Stupid. You're not really asking the question. So. Okay, here it goes. I'm having a record year. But I actually just say I'm having a record year I'm having. That's true. I am.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

This makes me sad time ask questions

[David]

that matter for if you don't want to honor your own time, you should you think about honoring the other person's time. And then what kind of year are you gonna have? Can you call your shot?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

All right.

[Mark Gagnon]

All right.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah. So the problem is like, he needs an intervention and the people in his life are not capable of like, they're still somehow drafting off whatever clout remains. And it's like, dude, this guy needs to like, go to like a facility. He was trying to fight Joe Rogan. Ye.

[Mark Gagnon]

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[Christos Papadopoulos]

She went down to Austin. I just, it makes me sad because, like, he's got kids and I'm like, oh, man. And it's like he's too much of a cash cow and like too much of a celeb for people, like pull off of it. But it's like, you gotta, we gotta let go of liver King and you gotta be Brian again.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah. I was gonna say society has let go, but he cannot. Yeah, he cannot.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I mean, it's. Maybe this is a psyop though. Maybe you got him K altered.

[Joey Avery]

Did he? Might have. Maybe they try to get big Pharma was like, liver's too healthy.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

That's what I'm saying. Dude.

[Joey Avery]

Dude, the liver and bone marrows, it's weird because it started off like kind of reasonable and then it just, it just got insane.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

He was super based for the first year.

[Joey Avery]

He was lying. He was lying about.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

But he was like, dude, eat liver and you'll look good. And that's not the worst advice. It's probably ham fisted, but maybe true.

[Joey Avery]

This is what I try to explain to people who are like new into the health space is like, like the supplements did not make the person jacked. They found someone who was jacked that you would buy supplements from.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I mean, Nathan Fielder proved this pretty exquisitely. Nathan, for you, did he?

[Joey Avery]

I don't know if you saw the best.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

So. So he tries to help a moving company and he goes, hey, the guys that move these boxes, like, they're probably getting a good workout. So why don't you market moving boxes as a health Trend. And then people are now paying you to move boxes. And then now you're double dipping. So you're getting the boxes move for the people are paying you. And then you're getting the people to pay to do it. And so now it's like, it's a great thing. And he found a guy that was roided up at a bodybuilding convention. Be like, you're going to be the face of this.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And then he got him on like Good Morning America and like all these like local news channels to like promote like moving boxes. And he's like, yeah, I got this physique from moving boxes. And it's obviously absurd because you're seeing it from our side, but if you're just watching the morning news and this guy's like, yeah, I got jacked moving boxes. You'd be like, maybe.

[Joey Avery]

And in your mind you're like, I mean, it's a natural thing. We've always done it. It's full body workout, it's legs, it's upper. It's a little anaerobic, like. And you just, you just were so dumb.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And it. That's what's unfixable.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

Is we're so dumb. And it's really that we're not meant to be exposed to all of this.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

So we've set up systems to trick our primitive minds.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

We literally should just be hitting each other in the head with sticks or

[Christos Papadopoulos]

hammers in our chins.

[Joey Avery]

Yes. Bone smashing.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

So I guess the question we need to land on is do people believe everything or do people believe nothing? I can't really tell.

[Joey Avery]

Depends on the person.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Well, a 2025 poll from Change Research says they asked people about a bunch of different conspiracy theories, like a massive sample. And they were like, which of these do you believe? 83% said that US leaders excuse human rights abuses abroad to protect political and business interests.

[David]

All right.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. 82% said the CIA had assassinated foreign leaders. Probably definitely true. 75% Jeffrey Epstein said Jeffrey Epstein was murdered to protect powerful, powerful people tracks. 74% said the mainstream media takes orders from elites to on what to cover. Probably 60 said the CIA has assassinated American political figures.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Now you take those numbers and like all the lowest number was 60%.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And it's like, okay, well, MLK was obviously killed by the CIA, Right. JFK was most certainly. I mean, RFK too. Yeah, probably. Now you're looking at this and you're like, this is not a fringe number. These are super major.

[David]

Right.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Like most people don't believe. And again, the. The official story on all these things is the opposite.

[Joey Avery]

I was gonna say we don't, like, actually have proof for a smoking gun for any of them. Right.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

No, I mean, like, circumstantially, you could look at JFK and be like, well, it wasn't Lee Harvey Oswald who did it. Who knows? But probably not that guy. But that guy that's connected. The CIA that's living in Russia now. It's one of these things where you look at and you're like, yeah, sorry,

[Joey Avery]

this is an aside, but I wanted to learn more about the JFK assassination because I'd heard that, like, the story is. Is, like, not, you know, legit.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, it's crazy.

[Joey Avery]

So I went and I was, like, in a bookstore, and I saw a book about it, and so I bought

[Christos Papadopoulos]

it, and I was.

[Joey Avery]

I was, like, living in South Africa at the time. I, like, bring it to the beach, and I'm like, I'm gonna get read in on this. And the book that I bought was, like, literally, like, the. Like. Like Harding Commission, like, government report that no one trusts the war. So I just have this, like, this, like, hardback version of the Warren Commission Report that no one believes. I'm reading it on a beach in Africa, like, I'm going to be fucking Lear much. And then I get, like, halfway through, and everyone's like, yeah, that's. I'm like, oh, my God.

[David]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

Not even being performative.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right.

[David]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Well, I have a couple podcasts I could send you on this exact topic,

[Joey Avery]

but are they you?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yes, exactly.

[Joey Avery]

And why JFK was killed by the first gay alien Nazi.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I mean, it is absurd. If you were to read the Warren Commission, you'd be like, okay, so one bullet came out of this gun, like, 300ft away, went through JFK, his head, and then into his chest and into Connelly's shoulder, into his arm, and then into his thigh, and then was put on his stretcher when he was getting put in the hospital, I think there

[Joey Avery]

was an extra bullet in. In rfk, too. Dude, the Kennedy is maybe. Just maybe they should make bullets.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, maybe they. I mean, yeah, they should get in the biz. I mean, at least profit off of it.

[Joey Avery]

Magic bullets.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

But it's just crazy that most people don't believe in this. Like, they don't believe in anything.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And I think it's possible. It's possible that, like, it's just too hard to, like, process things. Like, there's just so much out there that's, like, to dig into the JFK thing, you had to buy a fugazi book inside of that.

[Joey Avery]

Right.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And so like, that took time and effort.

[Joey Avery]

And it's also like the stakes of like, if you've ever worked at a company and you understand like how people at a higher up deal with an issue that reflects poorly on them, it's like the immediate thing isn't like, guess we got to tell everyone one. It's like, how do we do the least amount of damage to our overall organization and narrative?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And we do it by covering up.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And so it's like this is human nature.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

It's just been the case forever. I mean, like, conspiracy has been like a deep seated in like the human psyche all the way, you know, before Caesar, you know what I mean? But it's now, it's just everything's available.

[Joey Avery]

Did like Native Americans have conspiracies?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. They thought the mountains about talked talk to him. It's an interesting theory. I mean, maybe, maybe animism has strong roots. I don't know. I've never heard of mountain. I've listened to the rock

[Joey Avery]

Buy tequila, buy my terama.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Now, in 2018, two law professors named Robert Chesney and Danielle Cum published a paper in the California Law Review that introduced a concept called liars the dividend. Now the thesis. Once the public knows that videos can be faked, audio can be cloned, and images can be generated, once deepfakes are real and known to be real, anyone caught on camera doing anything that they don't want to be doing can simply claim that the record is fake. Now, the burden of truth, or the burden of proof rather is inverted. Instead of needing to prove that something is true, the public has to prove it's not fabricated. And so the people who benefit the most from this are the ones that have the most hide. Right. Because there's a clip of you saying the N word. Obviously, we've all seen it.

[Joey Avery]

Not that's true at all.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And that's exactly what you would say. And you say it's a deep fake. Right. It's crazy, right?

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Like anyone that has any type of slip up, like Morgan Wallen's debacle, like, if that happened today, he'd just be like, that's not true. And. And it probably would be believed, at least by the people that need to believe it the most, which are fans.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

That were kind of ambivalent to it anyway.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

But if you can just be like, yeah, this is a deep fake. It doesn't matter.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Crazy. And that's only going to happen more and more. So UNESCO in late 2025 described humanity as approaching the point they call a synthetic reality threshold. A point where humans can no longer distinguish authentic from fabricated media without technological assistance. So a Stanford study found that human beings can correctly identify high quality AI generated voice clones 24% of the time. Worse than a coin flip.

[Joey Avery]

And that's now.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. So when something happens like a shooting or a death or a viral tweet.

[Joey Avery]

What's up my nwords?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Hello.

[Joey Avery]

Oh, that's good.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Thank you. This is how Steven talking talk. Yeah, I learned that from Casey Rocket.

[Joey Avery]

Oh yeah, you just suck it in.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[David]

Whoa.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Right? That's not how I learned it. Yeah, he just taught me.

[Joey Avery]

It was the trade off.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

He just told me how to do it, man. You just breathe in while you do it. Hello, my name is Peter Hawking.

[Joey Avery]

That's good.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I want to have with young children. Okay. That's what Stephen Hawking said.

[Joey Avery]

Clip that. Clip that, please. I'll post it directly to my page. Former host of cam.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

No, no. Says this.

[Joey Avery]

I will take it over.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

It's about to be Camp Crease. Yeah. Now, you know this guy, Joseph Bodnar that I mentioned before is an analyst at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, described the foreign interference strategy in one sentence. This is the thing I talked about before. They're picking up these domestic actors and then amplifying them. And so you have an information environment that's mostly not human. The institutions have a documented history of lying Northwoods cointelpro, the technology to fabricate anything now exists and is relatively cheap. And the foreign actors who want to accelerate your distrust don't need to create content anymore. They can just find what you already believe and then amplify the voices around them. And each one of those things is now compounding on top of each other

[Joey Avery]

while the algorithms on top of that, you know, push that stuff harder and harder because it helps keep people engaged.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, It's a convergence of all the worst traits of human nature. Yeah. All for money. Yep. And power also. Now there is a, a desire for human beings to find through lines. This is the thing that you talked about before, Apophenia. And this is the human tendency to find meaningful patterns in random data. Now the, the now this is where it's interesting because like you see like a face in the clouds and you're like, oh, that's a face. You know, like you're finding connections with things that don't have any relative connection. And that's how A lot of people will discredit conspiracy theories with like, oh, yeah, this is just, you know, a connection. Apophenia. You're just finding an element.

[Joey Avery]

Trot that word out a lot, though, because I feel like people don't know that. And if you throw that on, they're going to be like, you're smart.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Apophenia.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah, you might just be engaging in apophenia. People be what? Well, you know, as a human being, you're probably perceived meaningful patterns.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Exactly. Now, the opposite of apophenia is also a failure mechanism. Like, if you're not noticing any patterns, that's also a, you know, real quick way to go extinct.

[Joey Avery]

Right.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

So the opposite of seeing patterns is, you know, missing patterns when they're real. Like, refusing to acknowledge Operation Northwoods is like a real document that was at least thrown out.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Allegedly refusing to see, like, MK Ultra really existed. Tuskegee medical experiments actually existed that, like, deep fakes can, like, swing elections in Slovakia and, like, not think that that could happen here. So, like, there has to be a certain level where it's like, okay, well, do you just find patterns in everything or should you just reject every pattern because you don't want to be apophenic?

[Joey Avery]

Right.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And it's like, all right, well, what do think you do?

[Joey Avery]

So, and if you reject every pattern, the outgrowth is just, like, always supporting the status quo and there's safety in that. And who hope is like, oh, people are trying their best and, you know, the world's a mess and.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. Now how do we deal with this?

[Joey Avery]

You think we blow it all up? Nuke ourselves?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I mean, you had a good theory of just kind of going and, you know, touching grass.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah, I. I think. I don't know if it fixes the problem, but I think in terms of you have to clean up your side of the street first. And in your own life, if you just spend your whole time getting wound up about the fake things in the fake world, then you will go crazy.

[David]

Yes.

[Joey Avery]

And so you need to go charge in reality.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yes, I think that is. Yeah, I think that is completely true. Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

But you still should be engaged with what's going on so that you can understand things. Because this stuff is affecting our elections.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I mean, also, it's just affecting, like, your ability to operate as a human being, like, existing within these destabilizing environments for hours on end, which most people are probably spending, like, upwards of five or six hours on the low end. Some up to, like 15, 18 hours in this digital Environment that is extremely toxic and destabilizing.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

If you're spending 15 to 18 hours at once online, I have one prescription for you. You need to go have sex with

[Christos Papadopoulos]

a real human being.

[Joey Avery]

A real human. And maybe I'm not good at that. Exactly. That's the problem. Spend all your time trying to do that. That might start at the gym. That could start at the gym. Yes. That could start with, you know, bone

[Christos Papadopoulos]

hammer to the face.

[Joey Avery]

A bone hammer to the face. But you can't just be online that much and expect to be normal.

[David]

Yes.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Now, there are a couple little tools that I think people can use that I try to use. And the first is trying to draw a distinction between skepticism and cynicism. So skepticism would be like, hey, what is the evidence for the claim? And being willing to sort of update your beliefs based on that. Cynicism is the practice of assuming that everything is a lie. And I think that, like, skepticism is the tool. Cynicism is like the posture. Yeah. Skepticism can be really helpful. It kind of keeps you tethered to reality, whereas cynicism just kind of makes you, I think, angry and bitter and, like, completely distrusting of anything around you. Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And that doesn't work.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

No. The second is probabilistic thinking. You don't have to decide if something is true or not true in the moment the second you see it, but just ascribing probabilities to it. So, like, you can be like, all right, this is 70% likely. This is 30% likely. You can be like, I don't know. And just find more information. You don't have to immediately jump to a conclusion of every piece of data that you come across.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Which a lot of people aren't comfortable with. I. For whatever reason, and kind of okay with it.

[Joey Avery]

Just saying, like, yeah, that might be true.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Literally, like, is God real? I'm like, fair me. 95%.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah. That's a pretty hefty.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

That's how I feel. 95%. And I don't need to justify it. I just go, 95%.

[Joey Avery]

Do people within your faith take umbrage with the 5%? Because faith is, like, the number one thing.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I don't know. I'm just like, that's how I feel.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Now, like. Like. Like, in descending order, it's like, okay, well, like, is Christ Lord? I'm like, let's go like, 93%. Like, is the Catholic Church the best way to interface with it? I'm like, let's go like, 85. 5%.

[Joey Avery]

Okay.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

That's how I feel.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And for other people, those percentage might be different, but like that's how I deal with all media. Where like I'll see some. It's like, Mom, Donnie, I'm like, all right, let's just put a percentage to this.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I don't have to give it to this Binary. Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And also doing follow up research and checking multiple sources. And as much as people want to be like the damn legacy media, like journalistic places, if you, if you see something that you're skeptical of but a place with journalistic standards has confirmed it, you're on pretty good firming.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

Footing.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I think so. And that is the third point. Layering. Yeah. Trying to find not just one outlet, but multiple different outlets to then aggregate

[Joey Avery]

information and make sure it's not just an outlet. That is AI.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

That is every time I search, something like the Hindustan Times pops up and it's just like respitting back at me the thing that I searched and I'm like, did you just write this article?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

What?

[Joey Avery]

The second I'm like, score of Giants game. And it's like the Giants always play what is happening?

[Christos Papadopoulos]

But yeah, I think those are like, like maybe the, maybe the three best things. And I think the fourth thing is I would include what you said, which is just like deal with what you can control.

[David]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

That's what I try to do.

[Joey Avery]

Keep it in its box. You're. You're going to feel weird about things because you're exposed to things that you were never supposed to see.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And you do have to take an active stewardship in your own mental health.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And it requires logging off sometimes.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. And for some people it's hard because it's like how my whole job, I work in social media. Da da da.

[Joey Avery]

Both of us.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah. And it is hard and you go

[Joey Avery]

through phases where you're better and worse. Like sometimes I'll be like looking at, you know, like get in bed, I go to set my alarm and then I'm like scrolling and then I've just scrolled. Pre bed. Not good. Other times it's like I'm reading a book every night.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And that's better.

[David]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And you're like, yeah, Lee Harvey Oswald

[Joey Avery]

did kill this guy 100%. Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, he did actually. Alone.

[Joey Avery]

The Warren Commission is actually one of the best commissions that was ever commissioned. Yeah. And that was it.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Led by Alan Dulles, who was humiliated by JFK and ousted out of the CIA. Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

It's highly possible.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

That is true.

[Joey Avery]

But.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

But that doesn't matter.

[Joey Avery]

We all have our spots.

[David]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

You know, no one's perfect. No, and I. I just want to say that I believe the Warren Commission

[Christos Papadopoulos]

and I believe Alan Dulles.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I believe in his airport and I do. Yeah, it is crazy that we have JFK airport and then we also have Dulles airport.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

The guy that was killed. And the guy that killed him.

[Joey Avery]

That is pretty Couple Cities.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

American history is awesome, dude. Yeah, it isn't.

[David]

It.

[Joey Avery]

It is. It sure is. It's a fucking mess. But is any place not.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I mean, I guess we're more ironic about it. Like there are many Kennedys that have died in plane crashes and then we named the airport jfk.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah, well, it's better than naming the lake. Just makes me a little uncomfortable.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

You don't want to fly into jfk.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah, yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Cuz something already flew into jfk, so that just feels like insult to injury

[Joey Avery]

to just taking off from a grassy knoll.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And it's the worst airport ever. You get halfway through that thing, you're

[Joey Avery]

like, I am not. I'm a bit. I am LaGuardian. If, if possible, Newark. If I must.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Now who's LaGuardia?

[Joey Avery]

JFK. Almost never.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Who do you think that was?

[Joey Avery]

LaGuardia. I bet he was a mayor of New York. I believe he was a relatively popular mayor of New York, if I'm not mistaken.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

You think he did anything terrible?

[Joey Avery]

Well, yeah, probably, but I don't know.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Fiorello de la Guard.

[Joey Avery]

See? No, I'm gonna say no. Look at that fat, beautiful Italian.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

All right, scroll down to his wiki.

[Joey Avery]

Look at those jowls full of neoki.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Pop, pop in there real quick. Pop in there, that wiki. Yeah, let's just, let's just see. All right, so on the left here, this is how you do wiki, by the way. You scroll all the way to the left and you see if there's anything immediately crazy because this is where it's going to be. Like early life, political career, scandal. Yeah, but no, nothing there. That's pretty good. Political career, mayor of New York, irascible,

[Joey Avery]

energet, diminutive, rotund, stature is crazy. Dude, that would be so tough to just have in your, in your wiki.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, go to personal life, because that to me is the thing that, that's really where the tales is told.

[Joey Avery]

He's five foot zero, five nothing, my

[Christos Papadopoulos]

guy, short king, okay? New York times gave him 5, 2. He's a good Catholic man. And yeah, he got married. His wife passed away, he got Another wife.

[Joey Avery]

Fresh wife, dude. Reload.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Nazi detention of sister. All right, hold on.

[Joey Avery]

Hold up.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Wait, scroll down a little bit. LaGuardia's sister, Gamma LaGuardia Gluck, married Herman Gluck, a Hungarian Jew. They were living in Hungary and they were arrested by the Gestapo. Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler knew that Gamma was LaGuardia's sister in order that she be held as a political prisoner.

[Joey Avery]

Whoa, dear.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

What a crazy life this guy had.

[Joey Avery]

He had a crazy life.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

You go through TSA and you're like, oh, man, could this get any worse? Think about LaGuardia.

[Joey Avery]

I will be thinking about LaGuardia, because I'll be right there at LaGuardia. Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And you're going to be like, you know what? It could be worse.

[Joey Avery]

I mean, yeah, my sister could get the last name Gluck.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I mean, I think he seems like

[Joey Avery]

he was a good dude.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, he seems like he was pretty solid. Yeah, he was.

[Joey Avery]

Go, go up to the very top. Because I thought it said something about like a panel of 69 scholars in 1993 ranked him as the best big city mayor in American history. What a friggin guy.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I didn't see the last names of these scholars.

[Joey Avery]

69.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

I need to see the last names. If it's a lot of Tuccis and Nochis and Guanalos, I'm gonna be like a coup glux. All right, well, I think he was

[Joey Avery]

a great mayor and let's have nice things, you know, and has a better airport in. In terms of pattern recognition. I think that there is a. An assumption that everyone who is successful, that everyone who is in power has horrible dark secrets because we hear about them so much. And it is important to note that a lot of people just were good.

[David]

Yeah.

[Joey Avery]

And. But you don't hear those stories.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

No.

[Joey Avery]

So we're here to tell one.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

We'll find our way.

[Joey Avery]

We'll find our way.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

And as human beings, I actually trust the will of the spirit to find the truth. And I think we'll be fine.

[Joey Avery]

We'll be fine.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

But it is funny. Also, watch out for your parents too, with the AI stuff. That's the other thing. I have a good pal whose dad.

[Joey Avery]

My dad saw AI coming and just died.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

He was like, I can't handle it.

[Joey Avery]

He's like, I'm out.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

But I will let you upload my consciousness. Yeah, you could make an AI of your dad.

[Joey Avery]

That'd be awesome. Why is my AI drinking

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Alcoholics Intelligence. Yeah, that's why. Yeah. No, I had a Friend of mine whose dad was trolling and he was like skyboxing from behind the couch and he's scrolling. And it's just like right after Rob Reiner is killed by his own son.

[Joey Avery]

Jesus.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

It says, looks like Rob Reiner might have deserved it. And then it's a tweet from Rob Reiner that says, wow, they miss Trump. Next time I hope they get him. And then his dad sees it, likes it, keep scrolling. And then my friend's sitting there being like, my. He knows that that's fake. Right? And he Googles real quick. He's like, did Rob Reiner say that about Trump? Right. Never happened. And then he had to pull his dad aside and be like, hey, dad, you know that that's not. That's not true. And he's like, what? And he's like, just scroll up real quick. And he's like, that Rob Reiter never said that. And his dad was like, huh, Well, I still like it. And then just kept scrolling and that was it.

[Joey Avery]

That's the problem. That is the problem is like, something will be fake and people will be like, yeah, but is it though? Because it feel right. And it's like you're justifying a dude who was brutally murdered by his own mentally ill son.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joey Avery]

Because. Because of some. I mean, that's. Now that's mental illness.

[David]

Yep.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Now, if people are arguing with you in the comments, they're probably not real. If they're hating on me in the comments, they're definitely not real.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah, Almost certainly any of my ops are bots.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

100%.

[Joey Avery]

Yeah.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

If you're getting fed content to make you feel angry, there's probably a reason for it. So be on a little lookout and ultimately go outside and love your family.

[Joey Avery]

And right before you do, watch my special Joey Avery live in San Francisco. Check me out. I'm all over the web. Post tons of great clips. I'm on tour Joey.com and I have a podcast called the Joey Show.

[Christos Papadopoulos]

Unfortunately, that's true. Joey is a fantastic stand up comedian. You should go check him out. Anyway, Christos, David, thanks for tuning in. Appreciate y'. All. God bless you. Thank you so much for tuning to camp. If you're interested in content like this, we'll make sure you subscribe. If you like historical content, great news. We have a whole history camp where we talk about everything that's ever happened. And if you want to know what's going to happen next, you can check our religion camp. And that's the story of everything that's ever happened spiritually and ultimately why we're here, why, what we're doing, where we came from and where we're going to go. Anyway, God bless you all. Thank you so much. Peace. Hey, guys, if you love conspiracies and hypothetical history, well, I want to invite you to check out signal 33. This is a companion pod to our podcast here at camp. It's made and edited by the same team that runs all of our shows, and I choose the topics every single week. So check it out. Subscribe and start the dialogue in the comment section.