Podcast Summary

Podcast: TRASHFUTURE
Episode: PREVIEW Baby Billy’s Bible Hackers ft. Josh Boerman
Date: October 31, 2025
Guests: Josh Boerman
Hosts: Matt, Sarah, others

Overview

This episode of TRASHFUTURE dissects Grokipedia—recently launched as a right-wing alternative to Wikipedia—and explores how technology, large language models (LLMs), and conservative “consensus reality” are colliding. The hosts and guest Josh Boerman examine Grokipedia’s content, its role in information warfare, and its broader implications for public discourse, the rewriting of history, and social division in the age of algorithmic truth manufacturing.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Creation and Purpose of Grokipedia

• Grokipedia as a Right-Wing Wikipedia:
  The group reacts to Grokipedia, describing it as the first explicitly right-wing wiki purporting to be “the authoritative, democratically derived source of truth.”

  • Matt (00:12): “I want to talk about Grokipedia, the Awesome, the first right wing wiki website ever that's ever been made.”

• Automated Bias:
  The show highlights the replacement of consensus-driven, citation-based knowledge with a system driven by LLMs and tailored to right-wing talking points.

  • Josh (00:36): “It should all be automated by a large language model that is sort of prompted by the world's stupidest man.”

Grokipedia’s Distortion and Dehumanization

• Misinformation about George Floyd:
  The hosts dissect Grokipedia’s George Floyd entry, highlighting its focus on Floyd’s criminal record, omitting how he died, and downplaying police violence. The group is repulsed by how the entry leads with demonization and deflection, showcasing how the platform exists as a “soft play area” for prejudice.

  • Josh (01:53): “This is absolutely disgusting. This is one of the worst things I've seen in a bit... it kicks off by saying George Perry Floyd Jr. Was an American man with a lengthy criminal record... that is the leading state sentence.”
  • Matt (01:04): “The best way to think about conservative thought, right, ... is that it is supposed to be a soft play area for any prejudice that you might have.”

• Derisive Memorable Line:

  • Josh on Grokipedia’s narrative: (02:51) “Yeah, man. What if his neck just did that?”
  • Sarah: (02:53) “That.”
  • Josh (mocking the narrative): “Shut the fuck up.”

Durability and Impact of Algorithmic Reality

• Consistency and Durability over Truth:
  Josh explains Grokipedia’s output is not just random LLM hallucinations; its prompts are fixed, which enables persistent, repeatable rewriting of reality.

  • Josh (03:44): “Compared to the output of a typical large language model... this is setting specific prompts in stone so that it is in fact consistent... That makes it a more durable way to reshape language and reshape reality.”

• Self-Reinforcing Echo Chambers:
  As more internet content is powered by LLMs scraping similar biased sources, such manufactured reality becomes ever more dominant.

Downplaying Political Violence

• Minimizing the January 6th Attack:
  The January 6th Capitol riot is framed by Grokipedia as non-violent and cleared quickly—serving as an example of revisionist history made algorithmically accessible.
  • Josh (04:47): Reads from Grokipedia: “After unauthorized occupation of areas including the Senate chamber, most carried no firearms and the incursion was cleared within hours, allowing certification to resume that evening.”
  • Matt: (04:47) “So it basically was like a. Not a big deal.”
  • Josh (deadpan): “It was pretty chill.”

Elon Musk, UK Politics, and Manufactured Crisis

• Civilizational War Rhetoric:
  The discussion veers into Elon Musk’s political posturing, especially around Tommy Robinson and UK “culture war” fantasies pushed by American commentators craving turmoil at a safe distance.

  • Matt (05:35): Parodies Musk’s Tolkien analogy and fearmongering about immigration:
    “…only because they were protected by the hard men of Gondor. ...It is time for the English to ally with the hard men like Tommy Robinson and fight for their survival or they shall surely all die.”

• Media-fed Delusions:
  The hosts mock British culture-war tropes—like anger over diverse TV ads and fabricated stories of street violence—pointing out how most of this outrage is disconnected from respondents’ real lives, yet is given a “consensus reality” veneer by something like Grokipedia.

  • Matt (06:19): “...the baby was an illegal immigrant and the baby murdered me, right? I was murdered by... an illegal baby.”

Grokipedia as a Tool for Coherent Conspiracies

• Narrative Crafting over Documentation:
  Sarah notes Grokipedia’s entries (e.g., on Tommy Robinson) are exceptionally long, reflecting how LLMs churn out verbose but narrative-driven “explanations,” which stitch conspiracy to coherence and encourage superficial reading.
  • Sarah (08:30): “The opening paragraph... is, like, very interesting in terms of... what it tells us about what this thing is.”
  • Josh (09:03): “All of them are way too long. ...because the way these are spat out... by large language models, they are always way too long.”
  • Sarah (09:16): “I think the point about just, like, kind of letting the LLM run wild, but... putting enough guardrails in there to... craft a narrative... what this really operates as is a system that organizes various disparate conspiracy theories into something... superficially coherent.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Grokipedia’s real impact:
  • Matt (01:04): “A soft play area for justifications of the less humanity of other people. ...Every time you like jump on the trampoline, it directly hits someone who is strapped underneath.”
• Josh on rewriting reality:
  • Josh (03:44): “A more durable way to reshape language and reshape reality.”
• Dark humor on tabloid panics:
  • Matt (06:19): “The baby was an illegal immigrant and the baby murdered me, right? I was murdered by an illegal baby.”
• On the dangers of algorithmic narratives:
  • Sarah (09:16): “What this really operates as is... a system that... organizes various disparate conspiracy theories into something of seemingly... superficially coherent.”

Key Timestamps

• 00:00–01:00 — Introduction to Grokipedia and its replacement of consensus knowledge
• 01:50–02:55 — Discussion and disgust at Grokipedia’s George Floyd article
• 03:44–04:47 — Commentary on the platform’s durability and role in shaping reality
• 04:47–05:20 — Comparing language models’ outputs and collective memory rewriting
• 05:20–06:19 — Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson, and UK “civilizational war” rhetoric
• 08:21–09:16 — Grokipedia’s verbose propaganda and its systematization of conspiracy

Tone & Style

• Satirical, irreverent, and darkly humorous
• Mixes genuine outrage, withering mockery, and moments of absurd parody
• Deeply critical of both right-wing propaganda and the technological trends enabling it

This episode offers a sharp critique of Grokipedia as a symptom and a vehicle of an emerging, AI-driven parallel reality: at once a joke and a chilling experiment in algorithmic revisionism. The hosts use humor and pointed analysis to pull back the curtain on how such projects manufacture “truth” to serve existing prejudice—and what that means for the future of social consensus.