The Life of Fredrick Brennan feat. Jay Brandstetter (E361)

Summary

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QAA Podcast – Episode 361: "The Life of Frederick Brennan" feat. Jay Branstetter

Date: February 27, 2026
Hosts: Jake Rockatansky, Travis View, Julian Feeld
Guest: Jay Branstetter (Internet historian, host of "I'm from the Internet," former personal assistant and partner to Frederick Brennan)

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Episode Overview

This episode is a heartfelt retrospective and critical examination of the life, struggles, and impact of Frederick Brennan ("Hotwheels"), the self-taught programmer, type designer, and founder of 8chan who passed away in January 2026 at the age of 31. The hosts are joined by Jay Branstetter—Frederick’s caregiver, partner, and close collaborator in his final months—to offer an intimate and nuanced portrait of Brennan’s journey: from a childhood of chronic pain and foster care, through his central role in the wild evolution of imageboard culture, to his very public reckoning and activism against online extremism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Frederick Brennan’s Early Life and Disability

• Chronic medical trauma: Fred suffered from osteogenesis imperfecta ("brittle bone disease"), frequent fractures, and persistent, severe pain.
  • "When you have OI, it's kind of like your bones are 10 years older than the rest of you on top of being brittle." – Jay, [04:54]
• Childhood isolation: Experiences of ableism, foster care, and family upheaval. Many fond family moments involved finding creative ways to play and move together despite disabilities.
  • "They had like carpeting on the ground, so it was very soft... they would all scoot around because none of them could walk." – Jay, [03:55]
• Navigating the world: Small barriers—sidewalk cracks, steps—became major obstacles, requiring constant help, vigilance, and trust in others.
  • "To leave, to go somewhere... you have to essentially put your life in someone else's hands." – Jake, [06:47]

2. Mental Health, Neurodiversity, and Identity

• Autism diagnosis: Both Jay and Fred were diagnosed in adulthood; this contextualized some of their social difficulties and fueled introspection about their needs and relationships.
  • "From what I understand, he figured it out online... meeting a lot of other neurodiverse people..." – Jay, [07:56]
• Asexuality & self-acceptance: Both struggled with expectations around sexuality and found community, particularly among neurodiverse and online circles.
• Coping with mood swings: Fred was described as temperamental but deeply reflective and capable of growth.
  • "If you can't understand why someone like Fred did that, then what even are you... you have to have some level of emotional compassion." – Jake, [10:26]

3. The Birth of 8chan & Imageboard Culture

• Early immersion in forums: Fred’s formative years were shaped by imageboards and forums. WizardChan and later 8chan began as attempts to forge free, open spaces—a double-edged sword.
  • "He was 19 when he made 8chan. Famously, you know, literally a teenager when he started." – Jay, [11:27]
• Gamergate & QAnon: 8chan became ground zero for online extremism. Fred’s original vision—an open forum uniting elements of 4chan and Reddit—was quickly overtaken by harassment campaigns and radicalization.
  • "It was only because of this horrible harassment campaign that this started gaining traction..." – Travis, [39:07]

4. Pain Management & Addiction

• Opioid dependence: Fred endured lifelong opioid pain management, later self-medicating with fentanyl patches ordered online after losing reliable healthcare access.
  • "When he came back here... he wound up self doing his. He wound up ordering like off the dark web, getting fentanyl patches." – Jay, [12:59]
• Rehab struggles: Methadone maintenance and withdrawal introduced their own hardships; logistics of care added additional barriers.
  • "Going to rehab is already hard enough... If I wasn't there, he wouldn't have been able to do it." – Jay, [15:16]
• Health crises: Overdose on ibuprofen led to liver damage, hallucinations, and a near-death experience.
  • "He wasn’t communicating how much pain he was in...it messed up his liver enzyme and he was hallucinating." – Jay, [16:18]

5. Radicalization, Redemption & Public Reckoning

• Break with 8chan: After the Christchurch mosque shooting, hosted material on 8chan was key in Fred’s renunciation of unmoderated free speech philosophies.
  • "He cited that a lot as the one that sort of turned around." – Jay, [45:40]
• Targeted by Jim & Ron Watkins: After attempting to deplatform 8chan, Fred endured months of legal harassment (“lawfare”) and threats from the site’s new owners.
  • "He did a lot of work after Cloudflare stopped providing services for 8chan... contacting all these hosting companies..." – Travis, [46:05]
• Personal cost of change: Jay and the hosts highlighted how rare and courageous it is to change, admit fault, and persist—even knowing forgiveness is not guaranteed.
  • "He not only admitted he was wrong, he completely destroyed the life he had built up to that point to try and set it right." – Jay, [23:52]

6. Personal Interests & Legacy Beyond 8chan

• Furry fandom & joy: Later in life, Fred found joy in furry art, commissioning work and openly embracing a side of himself that antagonized his former peer group.
  • "When he came out... We all saw when he came out as the raccoon..." – Jake, [19:44]
  • "He was loving it... He commissioned so much horny furry artwork. It rules." – Jake and Frederick, [19:55]
• Fonts & type design: A true passion—Fred was expert enough to identify obscure fonts at a glance and help friends choose the perfect type for their wedding invitations.
  • "We’d be on a walk at a store... he’d be like, hey, check out that sign over there. That’s the Igloo Cooler font." – Jay, [38:13]
• Learning, collecting, tinkering: In his last years, Fred dove into gaming, archiving rare media, learning languages, and intensely pursued new hobbies (e.g., playing cards, calypso music).
  • "He would just get really into subjects like that, in a fun way." – Jay, [55:04]

7. Life with Jay Branstetter and Offline Fulfillment

• From caregiver to partner: Jay’s relationship with Fred evolved from online friendship to caregiving to romantic partnership in Fred’s final six months.
  • "Inviting a stranger from the Internet to come take care of you... He got me." – Jay, [02:25]
• Private joys: In Fred’s last year, he took more pleasure in small daily acts, “living more off the Internet” and deepening close relationships.
  • "He was living a lot more of his life, you know, off the Internet... He was putting together Legos." – Jay, [60:42]

8. Complicated Family & Foster System Experiences

• Abuse and neglect in foster care: Stresses included exploitative caretakers (one, "Barb", forced foster kids—including Fred—to work and eat Elestra-laced food, subject to disturbing pranks and religious trauma).
  • "She would buy tubs of Elestra... She would put it in all their food and made them eat it." – Jay, [34:08]
  • "She and her bio kids would pretend to be raptured... so the foster kids would get scared." – Jay, [35:00]

9. Brennan’s Cultural & Historic Footprint

• Media attention: Fred became a sought-after commentator and interview subject for major outlets—sometimes reluctantly.
  • "He doesn’t like being on camera. He’s not somebody who enjoys... being in the spotlight." – Jay, [50:42]
• Role as a cautionary tale and model of change: The hosts see his arc—from “burnt pancake generation” pioneer to public atonement—as a model for how people can evolve after doing harm online.
  • "We need more examples of people, like, changing and evolving publicly and normalizing that." – Jake, [22:45]
• Unexpected tastes: Offbeat favorites included “The Devil Wears Prada” and a deep love for Calypso music.
  • "His favorite movie was The Devil Wears Prada." – Jay, [52:52]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the experience of OI:

“If you drop me, I will die. Like, if you drop me, I’m dead.”
– Fred (anecdotally via hosts), [06:32]

On neurodiversity & coping:

“I wish there was some sort of like way to intellectually override some of these impulses once we realize them... my Lord, this is a highly modified game. He has like 11 mods loaded in.”
– Jake, [08:56]

On personal growth and public reckoning:

“He not only admitted he was wrong, he basically like completely destroyed the life he had built up to that point to try and set it right.”
– Jay, [23:52]

On the aftermath of 8chan:

“There are people that they will never forgive you... That adds to the act, it adds to how difficult that act can be.”
– Jake, [24:51]

On Fred's joy in furry fandom:

“He commissioned so much horny, furry artwork. It rules.”
– Jake and Frederick, [19:55]

On Fred’s odd and harrowing foster experiences:

“She would put Elestra in all their food... and pretend to be raptured to scare the foster kids.”
– Jay, [34:08–35:00]

On Fred’s surprising media taste:

“His favorite movie was The Devil Wears Prada. One of the first things I did when I came here was we watched it together.”
– Jay, [53:17]

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Important Timestamps

• 02:04 – Jay begins discussing their relationship and Fred's final months
• 03:55 – Fred’s childhood life with OI and family memories
• 12:59 – Jay details Fred’s pain management struggles and fentanyl use
• 15:16–16:18 – The challenges of rehab and health crisis from ibuprofen overdose
• 19:44–20:12 – Fred’s journey into furry fandom and joy in art
• 23:52–24:51 – Deep dive on what meaningful public change looks like online
• 38:13 – Fred’s font obsession illustrated in daily life
• 45:40 – Christchurch shooting as Fred’s breaking point with 8chan
• 46:05–47:07 – Fred’s relentless campaign to keep 8chan offline
• 50:42 – Reflections on Fred’s complicated relationship with media visibility
• 52:52 – Jay reveals Fred’s favorite film is “The Devil Wears Prada”
• 60:42 – Jay on Fred’s last year: “living more of his life off the Internet”

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Jay Branstetter and "I'm from the Internet" Podcast

At the end of the episode, Jay plugs his own podcast, "I'm from the Internet," which explores the under-studied corners and living history of web communities, tracing everything from Something Awful to forgotten viral moments.

“I tell the story of it to Winslow. It’s the classic. I’m the subject matter expert. He’s reacting and doing flavor.”
– Jay, [57:30]

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Summary Tone

The episode is intimate, emotionally honest, and frequently darkly comedic—matching the spirit of its subject and the personalities of the QAA hosts. Throughout, the conversation weaves insights on trauma, the perils and potential of the Internet, and what real redemption looks like, all against the unpredictable alchemy of life online.

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For More:

• All QAA interviews with Frederick Brennan are available for free in their podcast archive.
• "I'm from the Internet" podcast features bonus episodes with Fred and deep dives into Internet lore.

Rest in peace, Frederick Brennan—a complicated legacy, but a life that made the Internet, and the world, “more interesting.”

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Transcript

[Jake]

Sam, if you're hearing this, well done.

[Julian Field]

You found a way to connect to the Internet. Welcome to the qaa podcast, episode 361, the life of Frederick Brennan. As always, we are your hosts, Jake

[Travis View]

Rockatansky, Julian Field and Travis View. Frederick Brennan, the self taught programmer and type designer best known for founding and later denouncing the anonymous imageboard, 8chan, died on January 10, 2026. He was 31 years old. We had Frederick on the show several times starting in 2019, and he always had valuable insights into the technical aspects of image boards, the owner operators of 8chan, Jim and Ron Watkins, and the history of the Internet. 8chan, which has since rebranded as a Coon, was the most extreme experiment in unmoderated online speech in history and central to both Gamergate and QAnon, as well as a place where white supremacist shooters posted their manifestos before going on rampages. As a consequence, Frederick's life and work is unavoidably tied to online extremism. But his denouncing of 8chan and his horrible consequences, as long as actively working to deplatform the site, which led to Jim Watkins attempting to kill him with lawfare, led to some of our more interesting questions and conversations around radicalization and redemption. We all have personal stories to share about Frederick, but to talk more intimately about his life and work, we are joined by Jay Branstetter. He is an Internet historian, host of the I'm from the Internet podcast, personal assistant to Frederick and Frederick's partner in the last months of his life. Jay, you have our condolences and thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.

[Jay Branstetter]

I'm glad I could finally talk about this. I know it happened back in January, but for personal reasons, his family didn't want to release it until his birthday on the 21st. So in a weird way, it feels kind of nice to finally have it out there and very heartening to see how many people he touched positively who are missing him.

[Travis View]

Yeah, yeah, I guess, like for those who don't know who, who, who were you to Fred in his last years?

[Jay Branstetter]

Well, when I first came up here, we were originally friends over the Internet and then I came up here to be his caretaker. And then, and then he had a health scare and it made us sort of have a heart to heart and then we sort of realized we had feelings for each other. And so for the last six months of his life, we were partners. Like, he lived with his family, I was living with them. Like I even lived with them before that, it was a very interesting experience. Going from like, like, you know, all things considered, things could have turned out a lot worse. Inviting a stranger from the Internet to come take care of you. I'm. He got me.

[Julian Field]

Yeah. Seriously, somebody to fall for instead of like, you know, a crazed murderer, per se.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah, well, as we'll find out, he was on drugs at this time, so I think that explains why his decision making skills weren't probably as good as they usually would be.

[Travis View]

Yeah, I mean, I think. I mean, I really wanted to really talk because I think that, you know, we're talking about Internet history. You know, he is a really important figure as much as, like, you know, some other, I guess, like, prominent, like forum founders. And I think that I'm sure you talked a lot about, you know, his life and his struggles. And something I, you know, I think has always been interesting to me is something about. There's something that's part of the public narrative about Frederick is his difficult childhood. He suffered, you know, chronic medical trauma and ableism, family upheaval, driven largely by his father, and then years of foster care where he experienced, like, exploitation, medical neglect. He lived with osteogenesis imperfecta, which is also known as brittle bone disease, which led him to frequently breaking his bones and constantly being in pain. So what did he tell you about his. His childhood and growing up with these disabilities?

[Jay Branstetter]

It was really neat to learn a lot of. I've never really, like, really known that much about what it's like to grow up with something like that. And like, there were some good memories. He told me about, like, when he was a kid, something that him and his mom and his sibling would do is they would put like, they had like, carpeting on the ground, so it was very soft. And she would get on the floor with them and all of them would just kind of scoot around because none of them could walk, but they could still kind move around together. They would. That was like how they would play together. Because when you have fertile bones, one of the things about that's really distressing is like, you don't really understand your own limitations. And also as a kid, you don't have full motor control yet. So it's very, you know, it's very upsetting to just be like, even outside of the fact that you're spending a lot of time unable to go out and interact with other kids because you're in a cast. It's like, even when you're out, it seems very upsetting to go through. I can definitely understand why that would be. I don't know how I would have handled that.

[Jake]

Yeah. I mean, when I, you know, talked to Fred about this, I think what was, you know, distressing about it was the fact that he had a kind of constant, unhealthy, healed broken bones. It was just, you know, some of them healed, some of them just didn't. And sneezing, for example, could become a real problem.

[Frederick Brennan]

Yeah.

[Jay Branstetter]

Like, that was sincerely. Like, it was half a joke, but sincerely a problem was like, he was like. I was always afraid I would make him laugh too hard. Like, that was seriously something we had to worry about. But, like. Yeah. In general, in terms of his fragile is like. Yeah. Just on a daily basis sometimes, like an old fracture. Like, especially now that he was getting older. Like with, you know, when the weather changes, he would feel it kind of everywhere instead of just in a knee or something or his. As time went on, this sort of. Yeah. The way he explained it to me is when you have OI, it's kind of like your bones are 10 years older than the rest of you on top of being brittle. So they, you know, because they age quicker. So it was very much one of those things where even. It was kind of worsening in some ways, even if he had better understanding of it.

[Jake]

Yeah. When he was in la, I mean, something that definitely marked me was just, like, the level of care that he required to just. I mean, and that's. If you don't leave your house, but if you leave your house, obviously, like, we went with him to a Bernie rally and we. We had to get, like, a van where, you know, like, the chair straps in at the back. It's hard to get him in, it's hard to get him out. Then you hope the place that you go to has, like, access for people. So it's just like, constantly having this level of effort that is kind of like superhuman, you know, like, none of us really understand that unless, maybe, I don't know, we had a period of being extremely sick or something.

[Julian Field]

Julian is leaving out, like, the funniest part of the story. Well, I. Funny, I guess, in retrospect, what is it where we had to carry Fred in his chair down the front steps, like, of Julian's apartment, because Julian was on the second floor. And then that second floor is up. Like, on the third floor, there's a whole second part of Steps. And Fred was being so funny about it because he was like, you guys don't understand. Like, please let me know, like, if you can really do this, because if you Drop me. I will die. Like, if you drop me, I'm dead.

[Jake]

Like, I guess, I guess that's funny. If. But because we didn't drop him, it would be less funny.

[Julian Field]

But he was basically like, are you guys sure that you can carry me? Because this isn't any. Just carry a wheelchair guy like down the stairs. This is like if anything goes wrong, like that's it.

[Jake]

Yeah, I mean that's, that's, that's, that's also something to take into account is to leave, to go somewhere to do things. You have to essentially put your life in someone else's hands. Yes. I mean that. It's like a lot of these processes, I think just mentally and physically are just, you know, it's like, it's very hard to understand if you haven't experienced it, because it's a totally different life, like in almost every way.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah, like a very invisible one is like sidewalks, like little cracks in the sidewalks to us or something that like his wheels can't get over. So there be times we walking down the street and then halfway between there'd be, there'd be a big crack. He'd be like, well, we got to turn around and they turn around and go on the side of the road to go around it. Just even little things like that you don't really like. That was even like a game idea he'd been tossing around like a physics based thing where one person's in a wheelchair, the other one's trying to, you know, cover stuff up for them. Because it was something that we talked about a lot as we were on walks, because it came up so often.

[Jake]

That's nice. It's like the opposite of the goose game where you're just like pissing everybody off. It's like you're just being extremely helpful.

[Travis View]

Something else that I think you discuss is that he was also diagnosed with autism as an adult. So like, how did he discover this? And I guess how. I guess it helped him, I guess, like kind of recontextualize some of his other struggles in childhood.

[Jay Branstetter]

Now, from what I understand, it's something that he figured out online because when he was spending his time on these online places, he was meeting a lot of other neurodiverse people. And it's something I bonded with him over because I didn't figure out I was autistic until I was 34. So that was one of the reasons why I was kind of happy to just pack up and move to another place. I was like, yeah, this stuff isn't working out. For me, let me try something else. But yeah, from what I understand, it was something he figured out. And so he never really got like the professional even back then. It was a lot better than it was when I was growing up. But I'm 38, by the way. I'm six years older than him, so not much of a difference, but relatively.

[Julian Field]

But anyway, still a young man.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah. And so he never really had the formal training. And a lot of it is kind of like in terms of recontextualizing, I think that definitely kind of especially with his turn being like, oh yeah, this is part of why I don't get along with people. This is part of why I don't want the same things that other people want. Like, I could see why a lot of his early hang ups about virginity and stuff, partially that was speaking from experience. Also as an asexual, this is something I've experienced at the idea of like, I know I'm supposed to be feeling a certain way. I don't. What is wrong with me that's making me like this and why can't I fix it? Like, that is a very unhealthy headspace to be in and it's very self reinforcing, you know, I really wish I

[Jake]

didn't relate to that. Like, there's just so many aspects of my life where I'm like stumped. Stumped daily. Love to be 42 and still talking about that, but it's a, it's a lifetime process, you know, and it's not like, oh, great, I got a diagnosis or now, now, now I have a name for this. Like, it doesn't make it any easier. It doesn't make you any better at getting along with people. It doesn't make you make choices in like a different way. Just the knowledge, you know, like, unfortunately, I wish, I wish there was some sort of like way to kind of intellectually override some of these impulses once we realize them, you know, there's like how difficult they're making our life and how if we had different behavior, like, it would just be so much easier. And then it's like, well, struggling to change it and ongo. So, yeah, I mean, I do. It's like just with him it's just a stack, you know, I mean, my Lord, this is a highly modified game. I'll put it that way. He has like 11 mods, like loaded into the. It's like he's got like.

[Julian Field]

No, he's got like 15 gigs of mods and he's. And it's downloading from like a P2P server. Like, yeah, it's going to take the whole night. You're going to have to leave the system on overnight.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah, he's one of those challenge runs that the streamers do for the real sickos. It's like, all right, you think? You see what this game normally, like, looks like. Let me show you what you could really do in this game.

[Julian Field]

Yeah, he's doing Diablo two hardcore runs.

[Jake]

Well, so far we're doing great. We're comparing Fred to a game. We're remembering when we almost killed him by dragon.

[Julian Field]

I think Fred would laugh at this.

[Jake]

I do, I do. I do miss him. Something that I said online is just, he made the world more interesting, you know, And I certainly, like, had my ups and downs with Fred. Like, he was a temperamental person.

[Travis View]

Like, you know, you'd be getting along

[Jake]

and then suddenly, suddenly you're not getting along and it's like, what's happening? What did I like? You know, and you try to kind of deal with it. But I think that, like, knowing Fred over a longer period of time, you just, you're aware, I suppose, that that is like an aspect of. Of how he is. And it's obviously not like, what he would pick if he could. Nobody wants, like, big mood shifts and stuff like that or, you know, like to create a kind of hyper defensive protection, I suppose, is the way I would. I would put it. And it's like, if you can't understand why someone like Fred did that, then, like, what, what even are you. Like, you have to have some level of, I don't know, just like, emotional compassion for someone, even when he's, you know, being a dick. Because later he won't again. Later you can have a good conversation with him again. You know, it's just. It was just kind of like an aspect of. Of knowing him and getting to know him and like letting him in your life. And so I don't know, it's. I do miss him. Like, it's. This is a weird. It's a weird experience to have a podcast where we're talking about him in third person and just like, you know, him being gone.

[Jay Branstetter]

So. Yeah, especially for someone where, like, he was a figure on the Internet, like, years before I ever met him. Like, I didn't meet him really until 2020 after he, you know, the documentary and everything. Like, I remember I first saw him, I think, like, in 2013, 2014, when Gamergate was unfolding and people were talking about the site where all those people were meeting. And I remember seeing him and it stood out to me because I was like, normally when I see the people who are on these sites, I don't get what they're so mad about. This guy, I kind of understand why he's angry at the world. Like, I get him. I'm not saying it's good, but I get where he's coming from. Especially for someone who was so young at the time. Like he was 19 when he made 8chan. Famously, like, you know, he was literally like a teenager when he first started.

[Julian Field]

That's crazy.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah.

[Jake]

Another thing that was an aspect of Fred's life that I know was very difficult and that I certainly related to was his relationship to pain management. You know, I mean, to be this, in this much physical pain, the, you know, opioids are like kind of like our only real solution because we just don't have that many good pain management drugs that can handle this level of distress. And so, you know, that's definitely something that I would talk a lot about with Fred and have my own experiences with addiction. So that was something that I really related to him about. But I think that I guess, like, not many people are perhaps aware that like his basically entire life that I knew him at least was struggling with intense drug addiction on top of everything else, which if you're talking mood swings, you're talking. I mean, that shit is built in as well. So, yeah, I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about that, Jay. I mean, it feels a bit weird bringing it up, but, you know, you were mentioning that Fred has had experiences in rehabilitation since. Or did.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah, because especially when he, you know, he grew up before we knew what we know now about things like OxyContin and stuff. So yeah, it's something he was taking his whole life. And then from what I understand, when he was in the Philippines, he was getting good, regular health care because like there was a doctor he went to regularly. There are doctors operate out of hospitals. So, like, he didn't have to travel to get care. It was all in the same building. And then when he came back here, it was quarantined first off, so he couldn't really get access to doctors easily. And also like, you know, he didn't really have an income. He was kind of isolated and everything. So he wound up self doing his. He wound up ordering like off the dark web, getting fentanyl patches. So he was, he was basically self medicating from there. He was kind of just spiraling, taking more and more of them. Like, you Know, and I didn't know about that when I first came up here, but that was how he was kind of working through it. And especially like, I feel like, like, especially after the dust had settled, the sort of, like the emotional sort of toll of like being like, you know, you went through all this stuff, you did all these things and now it's just kind of like you're by yourself and there's nothing you can really do because the world's kind of frozen right now. And yeah, why not just take this big pile of drugs you have? I can just. Again, I'm not excusing or apologizing it, but like, especially for someone like him who was already in chronic pain. Like, what else, you know, I get why he wound up like that, even if it sucks. And I wish I could have been there to help him with it back.

[Jake]

Yeah, of course. I mean the bottom line is to have any kind of, I think like judgment other than like, of course we're all responsible for our own actions. Like, you know, that's, that's different. But drug addiction doesn't have to do with choice. It's not about being weak willed. Like it's, you know. So I think for me, like, I definitely see it from that perspective. Having had my experiences in rehabilitation and periods of sobriety and periods of non sobriety. It's like the first thing you have to understand is that it's not a choice otherwise like, that person is detestable. Why, why would they hurt people around them and hurt themselves over and over by choice? That would obviously make them a bad person, you know, but of course that's just not, it's not our medical understanding of it anymore. But I'm always fucking blown away by how little information people have about this, including doctors. I've ended up in, you know, hospital settings and stuff, like highly distressful situations and just doctors like, absolutely. It's like, have you read anything about this? Like, this is crazy. You know, it's. It feels like we're in the fucking 1950s. Like I think people think that just because now openly talk about addiction and they talk about rehabilitation, like this stuff is a little bit more like in our zeitgeist, that people's minds have changed about it, I would argue. No, it is, it is medieval out there, the understanding of addiction.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah. And even just that's the thing about Fred too is going to a doctor, like regular people, like people with able bodied people already have trouble getting our doctors to understand just like him. Like they have to use like a Children's blood pressure cuff on his leg or it will break his arm when they try and take his blood pressure like right from get one he has like, no, you have to do this special or I'm going to get hurt. Yeah, so that was. Yeah. And also like in terms of rehab, that's the thing that's tough too. Like going to rehab is already hard enough. Like he had to pick up methadone and when you start off, you got to go there every day to get it. He can't drive, you know, there's not like a bus he can get to this clinic. If I wasn't there, he wouldn't have been able to do it. But because I was there, you know, every day I got to drive him up there. We had a nice little drive back and forth. We have to bundle him up, like get him strapped down in the van, do the whole thing. So all that extra stuff to do that. But you know, again, he really wanted this. I never had to force him to it or drag him out of bed. He was always up and at it. And also while he's doing this, he can't take opiates. So he's just like, has all this pain and just taking like over the counter stuff like ibuprofen and acetaminophen. Although eventually it did catch up with him a little as I can talk about too.

[Jake]

Yeah, I imagine the like either liver or stomach are going to pay for both of those if I'm familiar with like the downsides.

[Jay Branstetter]

Oh yeah. Especially if he wasn't really aware. Like. Yeah, basically last year around July we had to take him to the hospital because he, he wasn't communicating how much pain he was in. He was just popping more and more ibuprofen and it messed up his liver enzyme and he was like hallucinating. And we still don't have an official caus of death yet. We, they had the auto. We have his ashes and everything, but the autopsy has like a. We ordered a toxicology report and they said it could take up to six months. I think something like that. But I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of organ failure damage was related to that just because that happened before that and then his health, he never really fully bounced back after that. But that was, that was, that was why we sort of had that conversation. Because he had a near death experience and we were just talking and it was, you know, that's one, I guess one positive to come out of this. Even if it was like a horrible experience to go through yeah.

[Travis View]

Wow.

[Jake]

Yeah, that's. It's so difficult. That's. That's the thing is, like, you think you're kind of dealing and wrestling with, like, your biggest issues, and then some fucking new weird issue creeps up like, oh, I took too much ibuprofen, and that actually has this result, you know?

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah. It maybe see God and lightning bolts coming out of people. It was. Yeah. I didn't know that your liver could cause you to hallucinate. Like, that was very scary to witness on the outside, I'm sure, you know, so he could. He couldn't communicate to the doctors because he was out of his. Sort of out of his mind. So. Yeah, like, his hips got a little hurt because, like, he couldn't tell them how to carry him and such. He was just out of his mind with his liver stuff. So it was really. I'm glad I could be there for him at least.

[Jake]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Travis View]

Yeah. You know, I think one of the more interesting things about, you know, Fred Brennan's like, I guess, intellectual journey related to his relationship to, like, image boards and free speech. Like, you know, famously, he is. One of the very first image board he kind of owned was Wizard Chan, the Incel image board, which he purchased but then relinquished control. Control of after he lost his virginity. He's very wrong, Travis.

[Jake]

It was just discussing Gandalf and other wizards.

[Travis View]

But, yeah, I mean, like. Like, I'm curious if he ever talked about his early days and his early interest in sort of image board culture.

[Jay Branstetter]

We did talk about Internet and image board stuff in general. Like, my thing was I never really probed him about this stuff. I was curious, but also I understood that was something he was very, you know, it was a bad experience for him. So my thing was, if he brought it up, I would. I would be happy to follow it. But I never really poked him. But he did talk some about it then, like I do. It is kind of ironic that that's kind of what kicked this whole thing off was him being on Wizard Channel and he wound up with her in a relationship with an asexual. I mean, just like, if you, like, you know, even when you win, you're still kind of, you know, it's like it didn't matter in the end after all, you know, I think it's very sweet in a way.

[Julian Field]

Well, that's. That's so off in life is the things that we think are the most important end up just like we end up ditching that so quick when something actually important comes in front of us. I Totally get that.

[Jake]

Yeah. There's also that whole path which is like, Fred clearly started up in circles that had just profound, like misogyny and homophobia just built in. And his journey was to. To find out that his sexuality was actually like, larger than perhaps he understood at the time being a teenager. And I certainly relate to that too, you know. So, yeah, that's. That's another, like, whole very frustrating and difficult journey that he had to go on because, man, the contrast, you know, is wild.

[Jay Branstetter]

It really is. Yeah. And also another thing too, is. Is like, it was like he was. He was secretive about at the time, but he's a furry as well, so I could see that affecting as well, because that was very much one of the groups that, like, especially like 2000s image board culture, just like that was a very common target of ridicule. Like, I think furries weren't even allowed to post on 4chan for a long time. So that could see. Also sort of encouraging him to lock up and be sort of reclusive.

[Jake]

Yeah. When he came out, I certainly. I think we all. We all saw when he came out as the raccoon like that he was posting about. He was loving it.

[Julian Field]

Yeah. The art. I remember the artwork from that period was amazing.

[Jake]

He commissioned so much. He commissioned so much horny, furry artwork.

[Frederick Brennan]

It rules.

[Julian Field]

I love that. That's awesome.

[Jay Branstetter]

When I first started working for him, I was working remotely, and one of the first things he had me do is set up an FTP and download all his furry art commissions and organize them by artists.

[Julian Field]

Oh, my God, that's incredible.

[Jake]

Yeah. The adventures that. That little raccoon. I mean, do you ever wonder. Because a lot of the time the raccoon was pictured with larger, reliable, furry animal that, you know, took care of him then. Jay, you kind of ended up pretty well.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah.

[Jake]

Did he ever say, hey, man, could you wear the. Could you wear a costume?

[Jay Branstetter]

I did wear a panda onesie on Halloween one year. He couldn't wear. He couldn't wear one. So I got him a little Pikachu hat because the problem with costumes is his arms have to be unrestrained so he could still steer his chair. But no, that is pretty funny. I mean, that. That is honestly one of the reasons why I messaged him was I had this gimmick account that was very modest, successful in 2002, I had like 23,000 followers, and it was about something awful because that's sort of my specialty is, like, forums history. I'm actually not someone who used. Really used image boards very Much aside from, like, a brief time in 2008 when I crossed over because there was the Project Channel ology thing going on. I lived in Florida, so I got to go to the one at Clearwater at the protest. Like, I got to protest outside their headquarters. It was pretty cool. I'm glad I got to do that. But, yeah, I have my Twitter account. And because I'd never had any kind of Internet success like this before, I'm checking all the new people following it and just watching them come by. And also, I noticed when I'm like, oh, that one has a cute fursona, I click on it. I'm like, oh, that's funny. This Persona is. This guy, this furry is using the same name as the guy who owns 8chan. And then I realized I was, like, more followers than me. I'm like, oh, this is the Frederick Brennan. Because I didn't know he was a furry until that point. And then I had. And then immediately I'm like, wait, he's not just a. He's a furry, and he's also, like, the same type of furry that I am. I have to say hi to this guy. Like, yeah, we had. So, like, in spite of our physical differences and other things, like, we are very similar people in a lot of ways. So we immediately kind of bonded and hit it off, and it was. It was great. Yeah. I'm really, really, really. Again, another great reason to be open. Not. Not to hide your light under a bushel, because that's how people learn about you. Like, if he had still been hiding the fact he was a furry, I may never have thought to say hi to him. Like, what am I going to talk about with this? With this guy?

[Jake]

Yeah.

[Travis View]

Yeah.

[Jake]

Well, what I loved about that, like, part of Frederick's life is just how much joy it exuded. Like, he was doing commissions. He was, like, really enjoying himself doing this. And. And like you said, doing it very publicly. There was something quite beautiful and liberating, I have to say, about that. Shit shift.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah. And speaking from experience, as someone who also went through a similar thing, like, I hid the fact that I was a furry until my early 30s. And one of the things I think really helps is kind of like, especially if you're someone like him or me, where you can be a little mischievous, you have a little bit of, like, a troll spirit to you is sort of like going from being ashamed of it to realizing, no, it's good that it pisses these people off, because they deserve to be pissed off about it. They're jerks, you know, let me have fun. And then you're no longer. It doesn't feel bad when people are mean to you about it and because you just sort of recontextualize it.

[Jake]

Yeah, I know.

[Julian Field]

We need.

[Jake]

We need furry rights on the Internet, man. I'm sick of this.

[Julian Field]

But you. You explained it really well. What I observed as, like, an outsider, which was that, like. And what Julian mentioned previously is that you could see that Fred was having, like, so much fun with it and so much fun that it was, like, pissing off, like, people who, you know, who would have been his old sort of, like, cohorts, you know, from the Chans, who are basically, like, what the fuck? Like, what the fuck? You know? We so need more examples of people, like, changing and evolving publicly and normalizing. That, like, how your life looks at, like, 19, like, has nothing to do with, like, how happy you could be at 41 or 42. What. You know, whatever. And so, like, I always, like, thought that that was so. I was so, like, I just thought it was so fun that it was, like. I don't know. I just saw that as something so much more, like, braver than, like, I could have ever done or been open about on the Internet. And, yeah, just, like, I think that's why we're here. Having this conversation is like, what. What Julian said at the very beginning is that, like, Fred was really interesting. The world feels less because he's. He's gone.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah. I'm really glad that you brought that up because, like, yeah, like, that's one of the reasons I think that Fred is worth celebrating, too, because, like, you know, we were like the first generation of people to kind of have the Internet. And it's like, when you make pancakes, or at least when I make them, you always kind of burn the first one because you're figuring out, like, how hot the griddle is or, like, how the thing. It's like our generation was the burnt pancake. We didn't know what the fuck was going to happen. Now we have an idea of what happens. We've seen some of the patterns that play out. And so, like, that's the reason why Fred. So it's like getting someone to even admit they're wrong is really hard on the Internet. And he not only admitted he was wrong, he basically, like, completely destroyed the life he had built up to that point to try and set it right. And I was like, this is that. And then stuck to it. It wasn't just, like, him, like, especially now that there's this whole pipeline for people to sort of cynically become right wing grievance guys. He wasn't doing any of that shit. He was like, no, I am actually like, he was. He took it. He actually fought. And I think showing these real examples what it looks like when someone really meaningfully changes shows people that are in the position used to be that you can get out there is a way out of this. And we're seeing more and more what that looks like as more and more people get out and also become confident enough to talk about their experiences.

[Jake]

Yeah. And like, I think, you know, 100% he had to make that early decision to make that change and to oppose essentially everything that he had previously embraced. He had to make that knowing that there are people that they will never forgive you. There are people to this day, you know that it's like, if you talk about Fred in any positive way online, they're gonna come at you. And so he had to do that knowing that those people are like that, you know, and that, you know, I'd say that adds to the, to the act. I think it adds. It adds to like how difficult that act can be because that's the thing with being wrong and then admitting it is people, for various reasons, like, don't give a. They will never forgive you and they hate you and they won't change their mind about that. So it's human psychology is really, really fun.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah. That is one of the tough parts about it too. Like, I think for me personally, from my experience, I think that is a part of sort of really maturing and coming to terms with the fact that you did something bad is that you have to accept, like, not everyone's going to forgive you. That's something you have to live with. That's a consequence of what you did. Even if it would be good or better them if they did do that. And he was, he. I think he. For somebody who could be pretty inflammatory, I think he said he handled that with as much grace. With a lot more grace than I might expect. So, like the only time really complain about people online being mean to him is he's like, oh God, the Queen of Canada is bothering me again. Or whatever. Like QAnon, people would always be like pinging him whenever something was in the news.

[Jake]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It just reminds me of like also how much more visible Fred's life was online by the time he hit. Like maybe 13, 14, I remember. I mean, man, if I had to fucking explain what that, what I was doing on Geocities with a page, literally, called the Hanson Hate page, in which I, like, basically homophobically attacked, like, the band Hanson for no reason. For no. Just clearly working out my own sexual insecurities at a young age. It's like, no one knows about that.

[Jay Branstetter]

When I was a child, I wanted to kill Barney. Now that I'm an adult, I want to kill Hansen.

[Jake]

No one has a screen cap of that to fucking tell me I'm never going to be forgiven, you know? But I hope. I hope I'm a different person. It was so awful. God. Oh, man. I remember I even recorded. I was, like, very creative already. It was early podcasting, baby. I recorded a wave where it was like, like, oh, I'm Michael Jackson. I'm in the street, like, oh, the car's coming. Bam, it hit Michael Jackson. Like, all this stuff that I was like, this is so fun. I was such a little piece of shit, you know, like, what the fuck was I thinking? And in retrospect, I'm like, oh, all of these layers, these mods were already there and I didn't have any tools to deal with them at all. So instead it became, you know, all these different fucking coping mechanisms and stuff, but I'm just glad no one has a fucking screen cap of that that they can shove in my face every time I pretend to have any kind of, like, empathy or virtue or do anything decent in this way world. So, you know, Fred didn't have that. Fred was on the Sonic forums, like, you know, getting raided.

[Jay Branstetter]

I was going to ask if you knew about the Chao Garden being his origins, because that is such a. Yeah. If SEGA had just moderated their web spaces, none of this would have happened.

[Jake]

Totally. Can. I'll trace this back to. To Sonic. Yeah. No, I mean, it's. It's. So, yeah, he got rated and then he got interested in the chance. I mean, this is. I had long conversations with. You know, I consider probably my best interview ever. The first interview I did with Fred where it was the middle of the night for me and I was very low energy. But we really, like, like, went through all the different, like, parts of his life. So I still look back at that as something really cool. But, yeah, I did, of course, in the process find out about the Sonic board getting raided by these Chan morons. And then him being like, well, wait, what's this? It's like, you're 13. Like, I don't make any good. I made no good decisions back then, you know, and then. Yeah, and then kind of having it become his Whole identity. Like how do you see that process? I guess this is a question that I'm stealing from Travis here. He said when did the Internet shift from interest to identity first?

[Jay Branstetter]

Him I'm guessing from what I said. Like at first when he was a really little kid he had this odd experience where because he was someone who is very well, well written, he was very good at language, he could sort of pass as someone who was older. But also the stuff he would talk about kind of give him away. Like he would write like very passionate like essay length defenses of some malware installer. Cuz he liked the cursors it gave him like things like that. Like this very unsupervised child on the Internet not really knowing what he's doing, but knows that he likes it. And I can. And also I think a part of it too is like sort of realizing that he could express himself on there and sort of having this sort of identity. But like, like he talked about in the documentary like that thing where he said that the, like when he saw like the dark side of the Internet it reflected how he felt about himself. Like oh, this is how everyone really feels, they just won't say it instead of this. And from there I feel like that kind of. I think when he got doxed that was the point where it really turned a corner. Cuz at that point it was like he couldn't separate the two. So he was just like well I guess I'll just lean into it and just have this be my life now. But before that there was always, I guess kind of the release valve of well no one really knows who I am. I of kind could just stop one day.

[Jake]

Yeah, absolutely. I certainly had experiences like that early on on the Internet. Like for me it was a kind of in retrospect like a kind of smarter but not, not much less cruel version of like the kind of LOLcow phenomenon on the Kiwi farms. But it was, it was called Portal of Evil. Oh my gosh, of course, Old man Murray before that. So I was, I was like fucking chatting with these people at a way too young in age. I was too, I was too stupid. But I had that, that, that feeling, that niggling feeling of like maybe these guys are right and they're awful extremely cynical version of like life and who you are and how you can judge others. Maybe they're right because it felt like you said, it's like if you have something like I don't know, depression or all these things, like suddenly you see the world reflect just how awful you're already feeling.

[Julian Field]

I'm so happy that I somehow stayed away from the Internet from like 1996 through, I don't know, 2007, 2008. I mean, I really. I was an aim. I had aim, instant messenger or whatever, but that was it. I never got. I never went on to 4chan. I never saw any of the boards.

[Jake]

Well, you didn't. You weren't an IRC kid. That's the first thing you didn't do. Mirc. So I was on MIRC immediately when that shit. What's. What is that even Internet Relay Chat? Essentially, it's just a chat client that was made for free by this. This, I think, Indian guy. And it just became very, very easy to access things. Harder that you had to kind of almost no programming to make like, commands. So this was like a kind of graphic user interface that allowed you access to these Internet Relay chat rooms. And it was dramatic. You know, you could fucking. People would take over. There would be mod wars. They would like, you know, there's a lot going on.

[Julian Field]

I was too. I was too worried. My dad had too much, like, computer voodoo around the home. The home system, like, you know, if we had a Mac World magazine and there was a demo, he'd be like, well, hold on, what are you downloading?

[Jake]

Well, immediately, I'll tell you. I don't think MIRC was ever released for Mac. Right? Am I wrong?

[Jay Branstetter]

I'm not really familiar with Mac stuff.

[Jake]

I don't think MIRC was ever released for Mac. That's why.

[Julian Field]

Oh, and we were a Mac family through and through.

[Jake]

I remember we had an IRC relay, like, version. Did you ever have icq, Jake? That's another big one.

[Julian Field]

No, no, no, we had aol.

[Jake]

This motherfucker's never, like, typed in his friend's IP address into Win Nuke. He never typed it in.

[Julian Field]

The wind Nuke.

[Jake]

And he's never giving them the blue screen of death.

[Julian Field]

No, bro.

[Jake]

Bro. Get out of here.

[Jay Branstetter]

Bro.

[Jake]

Bro, we're fucking.

[Julian Field]

No, I really didn't use the computer. I had. I was aim. I did aim. And I remember distinctly my brother and I would make fun, because here's the thing is I was just on the borderline of like the popular group Far Fringes. So I was so trying to, like, deny my, like, theater, you know, my theater passions and like, try out for every sports, you know, as, you know, some sort of like, play to be popular. And so the Internet was like. That was like, oh, me and my brother, you know, to make fun of each other for being on the Internet too much. We would call each other Internet rats. Like, if we saw somebody sitting at the family computer with the AOL Ding going on a little too long, we'd be like, oh, you're an Internet rat. Like, that's the era that I was from where, like, chatting on the Internet was like, I don't know.

[Jake]

Like, I was like, a computer rat as soon as I could be. As soon as I found Mirc, I was like, the Internet's way more important than all these morons. I'm going to school.

[Julian Field]

I'm sure if I had been exposed, I would have loved it.

[Jake]

Stupid classmates. Unless they want to play Ultima online with me, in which case, like, yeah, we can. We can talk.

[Julian Field]

You know, I couldn't even have games, Mike. The Mac we had could barely run Myth off the demo cd.

[Jake]

Okay, Jake, you don't have to tell people that you, like, were tied to the radiator and that they fed you scraps

[Julian Field]

over Thanksgiving. My mom asked me. She was saying, like, she was like, do you think that you were deprived as a child? Like, I thought you had everything you. I thought you had everything you really asked for. And I was like, oh. I was like, oh, what did I say?

[Jake]

Moms are so awesome, dude. What a great, great. You can't escape that. That's the beam. That's the tractor beam. Your ship is like being swallowed by the mother ship as she says that. Because how can you work your way out of that? There's no way. That's awesome.

[Jay Branstetter]

I guess. While we're talking about mothers, let me tell you about one of Fred's foster moms. He had. Who is really funny. He told me a lot of complained a lot about her over the years. Her name was Barb. And one of his foster. So she was one of those people. She was very religious. She owned a catering business. And she just had, like, a flock of, like, foster children that she would have one work. Do catering work for her. Like, the older ones would actually, like, work it. And, like, since he couldn't walk and he was in the wheelchair, he would have to do stuff like make dumplings or whatever. Like, things he could do sitting down.

[Jake]

Like, way.

[Jay Branstetter]

That is like the. Yeah. Like cartoon. Yeah. Like Dickensian child abuse here.

[Jake]

Like, I think you're looking for the word entrepreneurship.

[Jay Branstetter]

That's true. They're disrupting the child labor market. I should be thinking ahead here, but yeah. And so, like, whatever. One of her hang ups was that she was obsessed with Elestra and this Was, like, in the 2000 2000s. Well, after we do. Elestra was bad and what it did to you. And she would buy tubs of Elestra when she cooked at home. She would put it in all their food, and she'd make them eat it.

[Jake]

Wait, wait, what is it? What is it?

[Jay Branstetter]

It's. In the 90s, it was, like, this additive that was supposed to make, like, fat. It made food not be as calorie dense. But the side effect is it makes the undigested oil just sort of leak out of your colon. So people realized it wasn't worth it.

[Julian Field]

Oh, yeah, this is. There was a certain kind of potato chip. I remember they would have to put, like, a. They would have to put a warning on it that said it causes anal leakage.

[Travis View]

I remember this.

[Julian Field]

It was a big joke when we were kids.

[Jake]

They have been feeding you poison in this country for so long. Like, I'm so glad I kind of grew outside the United States and, like, probably wasn't poisoned by some, like, new invention like Elestra. But, you guys, it's, like, awesome, man. They. They. It's like every 10 years, like, everything that everybody was eating is, like, recalled. And, like, we say, like, no, we can't not fit for consumption.

[Jay Branstetter]

They found the color out of space, and they used it to color yogurt for children. It is a very processed arrow food.

[Jake]

So she was fucking feeding them Elestra. Like, why? What? Why?

[Jay Branstetter]

Just because. I'm assuming she had an eating disorder. It sounds like she had some sort of weird fixation on it. I was like, whatever she would do is because they were, like, this really religious family. She and her bio kids would pretend to be raptured. They would just, like, leave their clothes in the floor and then hide. And the idea is, like, the foster kids would see that and get scared. They thought they were raptured. They jump out of the closet. Like, that's going to happen if you don't convert. Like, again, like, the foster system is horrible.

[Jake]

I hope this person is in fucking jail. Like, I'm sorry. Yeah, that is fucked.

[Julian Field]

Listening to just that story in my head, I was like, man, I'm surprised Fred wasn't more fucked up.

[Jay Branstetter]

Exactly. God, yeah. Holy shit. I will say one of her bio kids, he checked. He checked them on Facebook recently, and they're like a skull mask guy now. So their bio kids wound up exactly like you would expect parents like that to create.

[Jake]

Wow, man.

[Julian Field]

Do you know, Jay, offhand, like, how many foster homes Fred was in, like, over the course of his childhood?

[Jay Branstetter]

He Was only in the foster care system for a couple years. It's just he bounced between a bunch of them because he wasn't an easy kid to. That was a rebellious streak. That's kind of how he honed it was having these abusive parents he didn't like or these unsafe family environments to be. That's the thing, too, is sometimes one of the foster kids would be violent, and it was not a safe environment to be in. I'd probably guess half a dozen, based on the different families he talked about over the years.

[Jake]

Yeah, I mean, wizard makes. I mean, I always saw, like, he had to develop essentially the personality of the kind of evil viz. Right. Like, it's like, if you're getting abused so much, like, and you can't really do anything physical, you just. The only thing you have is the ear of the king. And I'm sure. I'm sure he came up with all kinds of ways of trying to at least get taken care of, you know,

[Jay Branstetter]

I guess sort of like the flip side of that is he was very good at talk. Like, like, sometimes, like, I'm autistic, sometimes I would get overwhelmed or something. He was very good at talking me down because, like, that's how he has to interact with everything. Whereas, like, in the past, I'm a big guy, if I, like, get loud or something, people get scared or they flinch him. He's like, okay, Jay. Just immediately just like, okay, I'm being ridiculous.

[Julian Field]

Okay, Jake. Oh, man. You know, I don't know if a lot of people know this, but Fred, I mean, people who knew him, I think do, but Fred was like, you know, a whiz with fonts. And this was something that I found out much later that this was kind of his, like, passion was fonts. And believe it or not, I actually hit him up. When my then fiance and I were trying to make our save the date invitations. We had, like, there was this font that she had seen that she was like, I really like this. But, like, we couldn't find it. We couldn't figure it out. And I was like, well, I was like, there is one person who I think, like, could probably help us. And I hit up Fred on Twitter and he was like, oh. He was like, yeah, that's like this version of something, like Courier. He was like, don't use that if you want something that's, like, closer to that, but, like, a way better font. He suggested this, like, totally different one that we ended up using. And so, like, he helped us figure out the font for our save the date invitations that went out to my entire family, who I'm sure would have still to this day have no idea that, you know, quote, unquote, Hot Wheels contributed.

[Jay Branstetter]

Oh, God.

[Jake]

Yeah. Well, what you don't know is secretly he built in like a crazy cipher to the font. And we're all going to be reading his manifesto soon after scanning that.

[Jay Branstetter]

Oh, God, no. Yeah, he was always like that. It never shut off. Like, we'd be on a walk at a store stuff. He'd be like, hey, check out that sign over there. See it? That's the igloo Cooler font. I'd be like, you're right. He can just spot stuff like that.

[Julian Field]

I love that.

[Jake]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Julian Field]

I love a weird, obsessed person about something very specific that not too many other people care about. As a Ghostbusters fan myself.

[Travis View]

Yeah, I mean, you talk about like, you're right. It's like, it's very difficult that his, like, you know, so much of his life is public and like, part of the public record because, like, lots of people have stupid ideas when they're 19 while high on mushrooms that they think is. Are profound. Yeah, but. But usually they're forgotten. But in Fred's case, this experience led him to creating 8chan, which he envisioned basically as some sort of hybrid between 4chan and Reddit. And you know, it's interesting is that he had this ambition for it to be, you know, to unseat Christopher Pool as, like in 4chan, as like, you know, the number, number one image board. And it basically it struggled for a while until GamerGate and. And 4chan sort of started banning Gamergate discussions. And all of a sudden his mostly inactive image board became very, very popular. And I think this is. I don't know, it's just. I think it's interesting part of his record because this is something that, you know, hn is something that he struggled to get going. And then it was only because of this horrible harassment campaign that this started. Started gaining traction. Did he. Did he ever talk about that experience about Gamergate? Nate Chan?

[Jay Branstetter]

I don't think he didn't really talk about that much specifically, I think, because he was probably ashamed of that time of his life, I imagine. Like, you know, when. When you've spent all this time being very immersed in something that you've come to renounce, like, in terms of. He would talk about, like, how like some of the stuff, like from the press, I guess, like people. People were just like, really mean to him all the time. Like, there's like, the idea, like a Lot of stuff that he did. Like, you talk about him sort of acting like the scheming Vizier. Like, when he ran 8chan, he did sort of like, act in a certain way to sort of, you know, doing that sort of like talking like Sephiroth or he's just, you know, because he wants to act like he's like an intimidating, aloof figure because he's scared by all these, like, psychos who keep threatening to kill him every time he tries to change something.

[Jake]

Yeah, you had to have, like, a pretty thick skin, I think. You know, if you're in constant contact with these people, you. You develop a very thick skin. Skin.

[Travis View]

Yeah. Then, yeah.

[Jay Branstetter]

So he.

[Travis View]

So the explosion of Gamergate caused him to have some difficulty keeping 8chan online, which led to his relationship with Jim Watkins, who offered to buy it and hire Fred in order to keep him online. Did he talk about his experiences with a Watkins in the Philippines?

[Jay Branstetter]

Oh, yeah. That was. We had sort of a thing. Neither of us drank, but we had a thing where whenever Jim died, we were going to get a thing. We were going to celebrate because, like, yeah, it was sort of like a shared thing where, like, when his health took a dirt. But other the actual time there, he told me a little bit about his time there. Like. Like a fun story I can open with was like, just sort of. Sort of like the buffoonery at play was once Jim was like, he wanted to try some kratom. So he went to like, a local Filipino worker who worked for him and gave him a couple thousand pesos. Was like, go buy me some Kratom. And when he came back, he had multiple garbage bags full of kratom leaf. Because Jim did not know that that that's how you buy kratom in the Philippines. It's just the raw product. He's like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with all this? He's like, I room full of drugs.

[Jake]

Yeah, yeah, Jim. It's true. Like, I have to say, and this is gonna come across as maybe a little. A little mean, but when I heard of Fred's passing after, you know, the original kind of shock and feelings, I had this thought that was just like, that motherfucker outlived him. Like, he didn't deserve to like, Jim. Jim should be gone. Like, ugh. And I know that's very childish, but, yeah, fuck him.

[Jay Branstetter]

Oh, God. Yeah. And then there is like, one story he told me about there that was like a darker one. He don't think he told it publicly, but it was like, I Think, like, for him, sort of like a. Probably a big moment for him where he was like, once they were at some sort of like, nightclub or something. And because he learned, he taught himself Tagalog, he liked the language there, he liked the culture of the Philippines. Like, it really broke his heart. He could never go back. He was a fugitive. And because he knew Tagalog, he could talk to, like, the people who lived there. He could talk, like the workers and such. And when they're at this club, he's talking to one of the women and she tells him, like, like, I'm a human trafficking victim. Can you help me? And he's just like, basically, he's like, what can I do? Like, I'm basically kind of realizing like, I want to help this person, but I can't because all these people also control the circumstances of my life. So it's kind of like, you know, I don't. I'm not saying that the Watkins is on this person. Just they were at a place and him sort of like, oh, this is the crowd and like the place that I'm at. I don't want to be here. Like, oh, it's like a very harrowing thing that stuck with him.

[Jake]

Yeah, yeah, of course, that's horrifying because you realize the lack of power and that, like, everybody around you, you know, the gyms and the Rons and all of these people are so just profoundly evil that, like, of course they end up around human trafficked people. Like, they were constantly, you know, kind of running small to medium sized scams that involved essentially human trafficking. And, you know, Jim is an extremely racist man who, you know, treats like, Filipinos as, like, inferior to like, let's say, a Japanese person. And so, yeah, it's like, it's just, you just start to. I guess he, at that point he probably realized, oh, I'm surround by evil that perhaps my heart doesn't want to embrace and I can do nothing about it because these people could kill me in two seconds and blame it on anything. Like, it's like, oh, he fell over. Like, yeah, now he's dead. It's like, you know, I mean, him getting out of the Philippines is one of the craziest things and a reason I'll always be thankful to Cullen Hoback for doing that in the process of making his film, because I think that was. I mean, he absolutely saved his life.

[Jay Branstetter]

Oh, 100%. Yeah. I sent him a message after the announcement to thank him and also tell him that he left one of his tripods here I found it when I was cleaning the house.

[Travis View]

Really. I'm really curious if you talked about his turn. Obviously his turn away from, like, being dependent upon the Watkins and escaping that horrible situation, but also realizing that is sort of like his. His earlier sort of philosophy about, like, unrestrained free speech online is unworkable and it leads to horrible things. I mean, what was. What do you think the turning point was for him in that. That kind of thinking?

[Jay Branstetter]

I think that. I think that honestly, the. The having to flee jail, like, like the prison system is pretty radicalizing for a lot of people. And I think going through that experience and even indirectly realizing, like, how quickly that your entire life could be turned like that or taken away from you, I think that kind of made him realize, like. Like he identified as a communist. When I knew him, like, he was. He had. He had gone very far in the opposite direction from his old beliefs. He was still very. He was still very principled. He still had strong, like. He was still very much into free software. He was still very much into open source software. He really liked the idea of information and knowledge being free to people. But also he was like, yeah, we can't let anything go anywhere. There has to be some kind of moderation. And I guess that was one of the things we first sort of bonded over, was talking about those sort of feelings of guilt about like, you know, like. Like misspent youth, things we did in the past, like the concepts of restorative justice. Like, those were some of the first things we talked about and thought about them a lot.

[Jake]

Comrade Brennan, we salute you.

[Travis View]

Yeah, I mean, yeah, One of the things that I remember that happened, it was in 2019, in the wake of the Christ Church massacre in New Zealand. And that that particular mass murderer put his manifesto on. On 8chan, and then put like, links to the Facebook live stream on 8chan, knowing other 8channers would, like, would like, see it and like, save that video and stuff. Well, I just remember, like, him being like, pretty disturbed about that, particularly where, like, you know, realizing that is like, it's like this thing that he created was now a, you know, really a tool for like, the worst people in the world to do horrible at atrocities.

[Jay Branstetter]

Oh, absolutely. And also he was like, we should at least take the site down for a day or two, just out of respect for the victims. And, you know, they were like, no, we're not taking the site down. What are you talking about? And that was another sort of like, Yeah, I think in terms of him realizing that his whole kind of life and world there that was like. He cited that a lot as like the one that sort of turned around. I guess I was thinking more in a general sense, like his political views when I was talking earlier. But yeah, in terms of like, that was like the specific moment he always cites is like, okay, this, this needs to change. This is not working.

[Travis View]

And yeah, one of the things that always really convinced me that, that he was. He was very sincere in this, in his hatred of 8chan. That's like beyond the fact that, you know, the. The owners were now literally threatening his life with lawfare and he was having to escape that horrible situation was that he did a lot of work after Cloudflare stopped providing services for 8chan, which caused the site to go down. Well, 8chan tried to find hosting and sort of DDoS protection elsewhere, and Frederick very actively tried to find where he was getting those services and then letting them know what they were doing and getting. Getting the site knocked down again. He spent a lot of time in energy just being a real real. He was using his online trolling instincts for good and trying to figure out what. What he needed to do. He just contacted all these hosting companies in order to figure out what he needed to do to get the site knocked out over and over and over again. Much to the frustration of Jim and Ron Watkins.

[Jay Branstetter]

Oh, yeah, no, that was so cool.

[Jake]

Well, they can always fucking. They can have their giant pile of evil garbage. They can have their little fucking sad empire. I really hope the worst for those fucking scum.

[Jay Branstetter]

Well, I do know that they aren't doing very well as of recently. Like last year, they tried to do a crypto currency because, like, I think Ron was talking about how he didn't have any money or anything. He was gonna have to get a job if they didn't turn things around. And so they did a cryptocurrency. People kept trying to give Fred free crypto to try and get him to doors. He's like, no, go away. Fuck off. Just. It also, like, his health isn't doing super good either. He had to sell a bunch of his businesses. So at least his empire is a lot smaller than it used to be, even if it couldn't be taken down completely.

[Travis View]

I'm really curious about what. I mean, guess what was Fred up to in 2025, like the last year of his. His life? I mean, what was, what was his main interest? Was he really into this is font making?

[Jay Branstetter]

It was. Yeah. When I was. I'd say, like up until he was doing the rehab, he wasn't doing very much after he started the method, though. And that's when I, like the first year or so, a lot of it was just him sort of like re. Re getting used to living a daily life, like getting out of his chair or go on walks. In terms of his hobbies, he, he, he was really into his fonts. He was. He hadn't been doing very much programming lately because by training trade he was a software engineer. But he had been out of practice for a while and now because of AI, he felt like it wasn't always something he could get back into. Like he tried to get back into fonts at one point and like his, like his contact that he had talked to you about, it was just talking about AI stuff. So it was kind of. He was kind of going through a similar thing that a lot of people are going through where his specialized skills weren't as he couldn't really find a use for them like he used to. But. So it was one of those things where he was kind of trying to find what his next thing might be. He was getting into different stuff. Like, you know, he was. He was watching a lot of YouTube, like educational YouTube, not like conspiracy YouTube, although occasionally we would watch something funny and laugh about it. Like we've done a couple bonus episodes about weird YouTube people we saw. Or like he got a little bit into gaming, which was kind of interesting. I helped him get into that. And he was getting into the programming side of it, like decompiling and recompiling old games. Especially someone who's floating Japanese. I think he could have done a lot of use for like, translations and stuff. That was a thing. He was also. He was sort of a media person a little bit too. He had. He would like, like to go out sometimes and find if there was a div DVD at the thrift store that wasn't on archive.org he'd buy it and rip it and put it on there. He liked to just do little things like that. He had a lot of little projects, like, to work on and he would abandon them a lot and move on to the next one. But, you know, it's always finding a new thing to work on some new project. And you know, he. There was a lot of ways his life could have gone from here also. Another thing he was talking about was he was thinking about studying for the bar exam because, like, he liked the idea of being able to like, help people or represent them if they needed.

[Jake]

Oh yeah, I bet he would be an incredible lawyer. Oh my God. Yeah, that would Be a powerful version of Fred, I think.

[Julian Field]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Travis View]

I think. Yeah.

[Julian Field]

This is.

[Travis View]

Yeah. Because he's his sort of like, his manipulative. I want to. Manipulative. But like, you know, his, like, his ability to like, argue, I think would be harnessed.

[Jake]

I mean, let's be honest. It's not even like. I'm not even saying it as an insult. Like, Fred had a lot. He was of. He could control stuff and twist things and was able to. He was good at manipulation. Like, I think he'd be a great lawyer.

[Travis View]

All right.

[Jake]

You know, I say that with full respect. You know, I mean, I mean, it's like, it makes sense, like, why he developed that. That. That defense. So. Yeah, I think he'd be great at defending people.

[Julian Field]

Yeah.

[Travis View]

I mean, the other thing is. It was really interesting in Fred is that he really became sort of unlikely, like, media star in recent years. You know, it was like, besides. Besides appearing on our own show, he was. He was once on the front page of the New York Times talking about how much he wanted to take down 8chan and like, he was in documentaries, he was in news reports. He was on podcasts like this one and yours.

[Jake]

There was a deep, deep description of him in the. The book Black Pill by L. Reeve. She did a lot of work with him. Cullen Hoback, of course, like, a lot of work with him. A lot of people got very interested in Fred's life and like you said.

[Frederick Brennan]

Yeah.

[Jake]

That he was a very visible person and his whole history was like, pretty. You could. You could just watch or listen to a few different things. Read. Read a book or two and know an immense amount about this. This man.

[Frederick Brennan]

Yeah.

[Jay Branstetter]

And as someone who knew him personally, that was kind of interesting too, because one of the things I realized, like, he doesn't like being on camera. He's not like somebody who enjoys. Enjoys being like. Like in the spotlight. Like, that was something he did. He felt like he had to. And like there was. He did enjoy some of it, obviously. But, like, by the time I came up here, he was the point where he was. He wasn't really doing interviews anymore because he felt like he kind of said everything he needed to say and he wasn't really enjoying it. But he did go to one more when I was here. I got to tag along with him to it. So that was kind of neat. It was. I think when PBS Frontline was interviewing him for something about Telegram, it was neat to get to see what it looks like when, like a national news team like that. Like, you know, it Takes me like, like a few hour to set up my microphone. I'm watching this team of pros just like sitting up whole cameras and microphones and speak. I'm just, wow. I see why they're professionals. It's neat to see in motion.

[Jake]

Yeah. Because normally if he was a bit more able, like, they'd probably put him in a van. Like, that's what happened to me. It was like, you know, 5:00am It's a CNN van. And then, you know, you just hope it's not a sprinter bringing you to like Guantanamo. But it's like, yeah, you just get in there and they interview you. Like, it's not. The whole studio is built into the van and like the drivers in the front like communicating with you over a little earpiece. It's crazy.

[Jay Branstetter]

I do have a fun story about that interview, actually. Now I think about it where it was in a vineyard. They wanted to have a nice backdrop. So it was like a, like a conference room there or something. And because it was like a hotel type place, the chair they have is like a very low to the ground, like, like recliner type chair. And so I, I had to like help pick him up out of his chair and set him into it. And then after the interview, it was too low for him to climb back into his chair, so I had to lift him up out of it to put him in there. And he was wearing his long shirt at the time. I'm trying to pick him up and it's a little heavy. I'm flipped around and actually kind of flip him. And like, I basically mooned the entire staff of PBS friendline by accident. I can't do anything about it because both my hands are busy moving him. So I'm like, okay, okay. Starting to get him in his chair. When I first came up here, I weighed like 325 pounds. I got in really good shape. Taking care of Fred.

[Jake]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's. Yeah, he would definitely be quite a workout to be the caretaker of.

[Julian Field]

Yeah, yeah.

[Travis View]

I mean, because like, you know, it's like people think that they know Frederick Brennan and what he's about because his life story, he's been published in so many article is. You know, you could read his Wikipedia page, which I'm very proud to say. His Wikipedia page has a whole subsection called opposition to QAnon. But is there, is there anything that you think that you know is interesting about Fred that maybe the world doesn't know about?

[Jay Branstetter]

It's just on the Wikipedia. Note, if you go to the Wikipedia Page for osteogenesis imperfecta. Those are his X rays on it. He was a big Wikipedia nerd. So he scanned him and he's like, okay, you guys have the rights for this. We need a picture for it. But, yeah, the one thing that surprised me about him was, like, based is he wasn't really a big media person, and the media that he liked was not at all what you would expect based on him being. Being like the. The guy who founded 8chan. Like, his favorite movie was the Devil Wears Prada. Wow. One of the first things I did when I came here was we watched it together.

[Jake]

Oh, my God, you guys. You guys should have been reading the tea leaves earlier.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah. And also, like, the. Or, like, music is like, type of music. He really like calypso because it's a historical genre so we could learn all about. And like, when we were going to the. He'd also listen to it on the way to the clinic and tell me the stories about the musicians or what it meant. And I was like, oh, wow, American. America was not good to that. To that country, Trinidad.

[Jake]

No. Yeah. Nor to many. I mean, honestly, I. Trying to. Struggling to figure out who America is good for at this point.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah.

[Jake]

America a large inconvenience in the international sphere.

[Jay Branstetter]

Boy. Yeah.

[Travis View]

I mean, yeah, it seemed like he did have really kind of like, diverse interests, you know?

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah. I think that's one of the reasons I got along with him really well, because he knew a lot of academic stuff, whereas I'm more of like a pop culture and culture person. So we complimented each other really well. Like, he didn't know hardly anything about movies or t. Like, once, you know, we live in New Jersey, Spirit Halloween was founded near here. So once it took him to the flagship store, and since he didn't know any of this stuff, it was. It was very fun. Like, we saw. He saw like. Like a Beetlejuice. He's like, oh, a prisoner. Because he's wearing the stripes. Just like, it's fun seeing somebody who's that out of touch with pop culture in a very cute way.

[Jake]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A prisoner. That prisoner is wearing weird makeup and has weird hair. Yeah. That's amazing. I. I mean, it's.

[Jay Branstetter]

It's.

[Jake]

That's the thing is, like, I guess like you said, you know, he started a lot of projects and stuff. He's someone that I relate to immensely over hyper fixation, just not being able to. It's like to do things halfway, you're either completely carried away down some fucking specific rabbit hole. And eclipsing the rest of the world and then you come back out of it like, what the hell was that? So, yeah, I mean, you know, that makes sense. It's like, then you. You have holes in like, other parts because you've just spent, you know, so much about such specialized things. I mean, that's really defined. Fred was an immense amount of highly specialized. Information was in that head.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah. Like once he got really into playing cards and he ordered like 12 different types of playing cards. He's had like whole decks. Like, oh, here's the French Tarot playing cards, here's this type, here's the German playing cards. He was like learning all the different types, all the different variations of solitaire that exist. Like, he would just get really into subjects like that in a fun way.

[Jake]

One thing that's really interesting about, you know, your relationship with Fred is the fact that you are kind of specialized in Something Awful, which is basically just before Fred's generation. Right. If I'm not wrong, Fred was not on Something Awful. Or was he?

[Jay Branstetter]

Oh, no, not at all. He was. He was never on there. That was a little before his time. And also, yeah, like, like Moot was a poster on Something Awful. And like a lot of the early ones, like Curtainer and she were also active Something Awful posters at the time. There was a lot of crossover with that and it was kind of like, I know there's a joke that sort of got circulated seriously, where it's like about how Blow text banning hentai caused January 6th. I wouldn't cause that directly a line of ascension through it. But yeah, Something Awful was a lot of the early 4chan user base was people who were from there. And also they tie it back to irc. The Strawberry Fields IRC channel for their anime sub forum was where a lot of early people were recruited for 4chan too. So yeah, it is very tied up in the early DNA of that.

[Jake]

And so did you guys find, like you were trading information about those different periods that essentially are linked through so many, so many weird mechanisms?

[Jay Branstetter]

That is pretty fun. It was kind of neat letting him know, like, what people he knew of were from there or got their start there before he knew about them or inversely, like, in general, I've noticed, like, it is kind of fun, like being like being a Something Awful person when all your friends are like Tumblr people or image board people. It's kind of like being in Australia and living in America where like all your frames of references are just different enough that everyone's like, oh, this is new. I'm not familiar with this. And it's. It's sort of like a fun angle. So I guess in terms of interaction, just we would sort of tell stories to each other about different website people. So it was like, I guess it. In a way, it was kind of like how even though the form was different, the actual experiences could be surprisingly similar. Just like instead of being known by usernames, it's just like, oh, that guy who would always do this thing.

[Jake]

Yeah, it's. I mean, again, like, we've tracked it, but the immiseration of. Of people, like, really plays a lot into every stage of. Of the mutations. But yeah, you have a podcast that deals with something awful. You want to tell us, like, what, what the name of the podcast is, where people could find it and tell us, like, what, what. What do you get up to there?

[Jay Branstetter]

Sure, yeah. I co host a podcast called I'm from the Internet. My co host is a comedian and game designer named Winslow Dumain. If you saw the Chicago Rat Hole in the news a couple years ago, he's the guy whose picture blew that whole thing up. So he's Internet history too, in his own way.

[Jake]

Yeah, I remember that. I remember the Rat Hole.

[Jay Branstetter]

It's fantastic. Yeah. For the first couple years, it was focused on the Something Awful forums, and last year we sort of switched. Now we're doing more general Internet history. But what it is is we usually. It's narrative Internet history. We focus on like a person or an event or a website or something. And I tell the story of it to Winslow. It's the classic. I'm the subject matter expert. Expert. It's his first time and he's. He's reacting and doing flavor. And also Fred has appeared in a couple bonus episodes. I've made them free. So if you want to hear him and me interacting, it's on there. But yeah, it's. It's pretty. We cover all sorts of different topics. We've even done a couple sports episodes. I don't know anything about sports. Like, we went when Hockey Night in Canada was choosing a new theme song and someone submitted a troll entry and it won the poll. And, like, the Canadian people were freaking out about this song with, like, gunshots and explosions in it. Opening hockey every week. Just fun little things like that. Or our drug episodes are Alzheimer's. The one where I announced I was starting to work for Fred was De Juice, which was a Soviet benzo that causes memory loss and stays active in your system for days. So people would take the Drug, forgot they took the drug, take more of the drug and then a week later come to and find out that like they'd crashed their car and lost their job. Like multiple lives were ruined over the course of that episode.

[Jake]

My God. Yeah, it's. I'm from the Internet, right? People could just search for it on, on any podcast platform.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah, I'm from the Internet. Or Ifti for sure. Like, when I say Internet history, people think it's like I'm Talking like the Vers 7 of Discord out of the new. No, no. This is very narrative. But also it's not, it's not like lolcow. It's not drama or snark. Like we try and have a point and we're pretty humanistic. Like there have been multiple times I did episodes about someone and they, they email me, like, thank you for being nice to me. Like, I did one on this guy who did like Hollywood replica vehicles. He had a replica of the, of the Jeep from Jurassic park and a video game company borrowed it for a trade event to promote a game. They were working on, Jurassic park. And when they returned it, it was all scrapped, patched up and he caused. And he wound up escalating into a public feud. And the content at the time was, oh, this guy was just trying to get them to give him free money basically. But as someone who worked in logistics, I dug it. I was like, no, they signed the bill of lading. The company was at fly here. I'm like getting to break through how that works and walk through it. Like, it's fun to actually get to do a little journalism sometimes as well. I don't try. And I'm not like one of those just reading Wikipedia people. I do, I do a lot of digging and try and give my own spin on things.

[Jake]

But that drug episode you're mentioning, it's not one of you guys that took that drug, right? You're just, you're talking about.

[Jay Branstetter]

Oh, no, no, no, no, I don't. Our Patreon doesn't make nearly enough for that, unfortunately. But yeah, it was like, it's. I was reading other people's experiences and sort of also when you have that zoomed out look like the drug subform on something awful, you can go to like the opiates thread, check the front page. Everyone there is perma banks. They died. It is one of those haunting places on the Internet. It's done more to keep me away from doing drugs than any actual anti drug work has done.

[Jake]

Yeah. And do you ever like cover like Arrowhead, like, just straight up. I mean, that's. That's an Internet subculture. That's like. I almost feel like, is there. Is there a good podcast on the whole history of Arrow? Like, it's fascinating.

[Jay Branstetter]

I don't know. I'm definitely have to do an episode on at some point. Like, now for the new ones I have did, like, I do some sort of episode. Like, I did one on Emotion Eric. It's fun to do nice ones, too. Like, fun websites. I did one on horse ebooks. A recent one was on the Oatmeal. That was fun to sort of break down that guy's whole methodology. And like, before AI, you know, making this type of crap was a bespoke human process, but it was still very cynical.

[Jake]

Yeah, well, yeah, I really recommend it. People should go check out. I'm from the Internet. It's really so nice of you to make the time, and it's just been a real pleasure talking. Talking to you.

[Jay Branstetter]

No, thank you so much for inviting me on. I'm really glad I can talk a little about Fred. Like, yeah, he was a very complicated person, and I'm really lucky. I got to know him at the time. His life, when he turned it around, and I'm sorry he didn't get more of a chance to share it with the world, but I still think it's really meaningful and important that he did turn things around and found also, like, part of the reason why he wasn't posting as much his last few years. He was living a lot more of his life, you know, off the. Off the Internet. He was having more fun. We were going on walks. He was putting together Legos. It was like even someone like him was sort of making it, sort of realizing, yeah, there's. Maybe this isn't how I want to spend my entire life. And I think that's a good thing, too. He helped me as well. We helped each other.

[Julian Field]

Yeah.

[Jake]

I don't think any, Any. Any one of us is in the danger of forgetting Frederick Brennan. So. Rest in peace, brother.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah. And thank you again.

[Jake]

Yeah, no, a really awkward moment to say, do you have anything else to plug? But, yeah, no, just.

[Jay Branstetter]

Just my pod. Just. I'm from the Internet. It's been running for a couple years, and I'm not really working on anything else right now. I'm always open to collab, though, if anyone has anything going on.

[Jake]

Do you have, like, Twitter or anything like that?

[Jay Branstetter]

Oh, yeah, I'm on Blue Sky. The podcast also has a link tree, and we do have a patreon IFT I pod it's only a dollar a month. We have over 50 episodes on there and I made the ones with Fred on them free. So if you don't want to pledge, you can go there and listen to them. The Preacher wars one is fun. He talks about some of the weird preachers his family was into who now he still follows on YouTube to make fun of. So it's a neat little look behind the window there too.

[Jake]

Hell yeah. People definitely go and do that. And if you're interested in our Patreon, that's patreon.comqaa we have a five bucks a month, a whole second episode for every main, and access to our entire very long catalog. At this point, I think all the Fred Brennan episodes are free. So if you want to search for his name on our podcast, you can go and listen to some of these conversations we're referring to. I even got him to kind of act as like the voice of God when we were at qcon. So he would just break in like in the middle of our live coverage and give. Give some information. So that was. That was really cool and fun too. And we have a mini series network as well. Well, cursed media.net if you're interested in, you know, these kind of serialized deeper dives that we've been doing over there. So yeah, we have a website too. Qapodcast.com listener until next week. May Fred Brennan bless you and keep you.

[Jay Branstetter]

We have auto queued content based on your preference.

[Travis View]

Is it true that you are somehow related to former CIA director John Brennan?

[Jake]

Yes.

[Travis View]

You can take the fifth on this one.

[Jake]

That's why I'm not.

[Frederick Brennan]

I wish I was. I wish I was because I would just call him Daddy or Daddy.

[Travis View]

Okay. No, nothing that either.

[Jake]

Okay, okay.

[Frederick Brennan]

He would have helped my ass, I'm sure.

[Julian Field]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Frederick Brennan]

Like Brennan is one of the most common surnames in the United States.

[Jake]

People don't know this.

[Frederick Brennan]

People have brainworms and they're idiots.

[Jake]

They don't know this. But Fred Brennan is actually the result of Brennan's super soldier program gone terribly wrong. He was supposed to be a superman and he could originally zap people. His eyes fly and shit like that.

[Frederick Brennan]

But then I just ended up as a fat cripple. What happened?

[Jake]

And you know what?

[Frederick Brennan]

I'm gonna sue the U.S. government.

[Jake]

And the Deep State turned their back on you. And that's. They're just. They're very much.

[Frederick Brennan]

Don't go fund me.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah.

[Jake]

Mr. Brennan, if you're out there, if you're listening. The CIA should donate 100%. They should donate to.

[Julian Field]

They should donate the money that you've earned from the cocaine that you pumped out into the streets this week, just this week alone. Please pump it back into Frederick's GoFundMe. The least you can do is get the guy in apartment.

[Jake]

We're asking cops to spend 10 less arrests this week and spend 10 bucks on Fred Brennan's. So stop arresting people and also pay him money.

[Frederick Brennan]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Jake]

That's right. Anytime. We love telling the police what to do on the show. Absolutely,

[Frederick Brennan]

man.

[Jake]

So, yeah, so now you're here and I suppose, I mean, even if maybe it wasn't your choice, it seems like you're going to be building a life in the United States.

[Frederick Brennan]

Yeah, it seems like that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna establish residency in California. I'm gonna go back to. You know, I was working on a project called Font Forge before. Yeah, it's just a font editor. You know, I have friends there who are helping me to cool. You know, it's like all my co workers are Internet people and all. Everybody I know is from the Internet, so it's kind of tough. But. Yeah, I mean, everybody has, you know, really come together.

[Julian Field]

So in a weird way, it is like you've sort of been ejected from the mate. You know, from the matrix of every. This whole online world where everything. That's how you knew how to get places. That's where people owed you favor, you owe them out.

[Frederick Brennan]

When I came back here, I just felt like I was 16 again.

[Julian Field]

Yeah.

[Frederick Brennan]

Like celebrating getting a bank account.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah.

[Frederick Brennan]

And getting a place to live on your own. Like, I literally feel like a teenager. Yeah.

[Julian Field]

Which is really hard. I mean, you know, I always, anytime I have to go, like, you know, stay with my parents or something, you know, you, you, you know, you turn from like a, a 30 year old to 30 something year old. Yeah. You're back to being like 12 years old again. It's a humbling. It's a humbling experience. And so. Yeah.

[Frederick Brennan]

But luckily, you know, parents are awesome. My mom just, she just puts up with my shit, you know, she puts up with me.

[Jake]

And so you used to live on the east coast and famously there's a story where cops, you went in to like, I guess be a witness and then the cops left you out in the cold for like, I don't know how long and you almost died basically from that.

[Frederick Brennan]

Yeah, I almost lost some toes.

[Jake]

What made you think that the west coast was a Better,

[Frederick Brennan]

Honestly, the reason I'm in Los Angeles is that the first friend who brought me here, this was just where the flight was landing, and then he would move on to where he had to go. But, you know, it was like I did not, you know, I really relied on the awesome guy who brought me here, and they made the choices. Like, if they had lived in Austin, Texas, that's where I'd be. If they lived in Hawaii, that's where I'd be.

[Jake]

That's right. If they had live in Little St. James, that's where you'd be.

[Frederick Brennan]

I have no idea where that is, but yes, exactly. Oh, that pedophile's island. I got it. Okay.

[Jay Branstetter]

Sweet Lord.

[Jake]

Well, fellas, I mean, yeah, I don't really know where to really go with this.

[Frederick Brennan]

I mean, you guys were so awesome to me, helping me out on such short notice. And it's like you didn't ask for anything and you didn't, like. So I really appreciate that. Like, this podcast, the people that make it, they are real bros. And it's not just for content for them. You know, they really, really helped me out on really short notice. Like, Julian Field, like, dropped everything on a Saturday and came to talk to me just to see what was going on, you know. Cause, like, at that point, it wasn't public yet. None of the documents had come out. Like, the arrests weren't Adam posted. Ronald Watkins didn't leak it to Neon Revolt yet.

[Jake]

Yeah, I don't never really come across a situation like this, so I don't know that I'm even qualified to understand it or comment yet, but it seems like we're kind of in the eye of the storm.

[Frederick Brennan]

I'm just glad that Jim Watkin is not Bloomberg. Levels of rich. There's nothing he can do in the United States.

[Jay Branstetter]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jake]

Well, maybe we can get. If we piss off Bloomberg enough, maybe

[Travis View]

he'll be on his radar.

[Jake]

He likes to do Dickensian things like, you know, like crush people with special needs for no particular reason. He does seem like he enjoys that.

[Frederick Brennan]

Can I have a million dollars, please?

[Jake]

Yeah, exactly.

[Travis View]

Straight to the gofundme.

[Jake]

We promise you we'll be making so many memes at some point, he'll make a hole. He'll make a hole.

[Julian Field]

You want a meme?

[Jay Branstetter]

Fuck that.

[Jake]

He'll make you an image board. Mr. Bloomberg. Have you ever heard of 12chan? Now, Mr. Bloomberg, this is a website that's gonna work for you and your campaign.

[Frederick Brennan]

Yeah. Bloomchan, Bloomchan.

[Jake]

That's right.

[Julian Field]

There you go.

[Jake]

That's your next one.

[Frederick Brennan]

Bloomin Onion.

[Jake]

Bloomin Onion Chan. Free blooming onions for your first post. We've got so many ideas here, honestly. We got you in the lab. We're cooking stuff up.

[Julian Field]

We probably. We've got so many great ideas, we're probably gonna have to shutter the podcast actually, and completely pivot towards a Bloomberg message board when that happens.

[Jake]

Sa.