AP Strange: 00:22

Pardon me while I have a strange interlude. But there is nothing else. Life is an obscure oboe bumming a ride on the omnibus of art. Among the misty corridors of time, and in those corridors I see figures, strange figures. Welcome back, my friends, to the AP Strange Show.

AP Strange: 01:08

I am your host, AP Strange. This is my show, and tonight's show is brought to you by the LBPR virus protection software. You can upload this onto your computer and it should protect you from all manner of entities online, be they demons or vengeful angels or technical goblins, and we'll even get some patches in there so that it can help you with evil eye or hexes and curses. So get the LBPR virus protection software on your computer now to save you from all the bad magics online. And today on the show, this is gonna be a really fun one.

AP Strange: 01:53

We've got author Shira Chess on the show tonight. She is an associate professor of entertainment and media studies at the University of Georgia, and she has written several books, but the topic of tonight's program is going to be her most recent, which is The Conjuring the Occult in Digital Discourse. So I bought this the moment I knew it was for sale and read it pretty much on a weekend. So I really enjoyed it. So welcome to the show, Shira.

Shira Chess: 02:25

Thank you, and thanks for reading and for the kind words.

AP Strange: 02:29

Of course. Yeah. Well, it's a it's it's a fascinating topic, and I guess starting off, just kind of get into a little bit about what drew you to this topic because I'm kind of led to understand that you were thinking about it more in the concept originally of, like, entities online, like, a ghost of the machine sort of deal, but

Shira Chess: 02:54

then Yeah.

AP Strange: 02:54

It turned into a different thing.

Shira Chess: 02:57

Yeah. I so I had my I had been writing about video games for many years. That had been my primary topic of research. And during the pandemic, like a lot of people, I got just really burned out on what I was doing. And I was like, what else could I do?

Shira Chess: 03:14

What else can I write about? And many years ago, I had the first book that I had written I co authored was about The Slender Man. And I was like, man, I had a lot of fun writing that book. I I I very much would like to revisit that that fun. And so I started I kind of just started noodling around with ideas.

Shira Chess: 03:33

And I had some I had I was on research leave, and so that was that gave me a lot of mental space. And my original thought was that I was going to it was gonna be a continuation of that idea, and it was originally called the haunted Internet. And I I just I wrote about 5,000 words, 6,000 words, and I was like, well, I've lost my argument. I don't even know what I'm talking about here. And I realized that it just wasn't it wasn't gelling right.

Shira Chess: 04:00

And so I took a step back, and I there there were, like, a few core books that I was reading at that moment that all kind of, like, congealed into this new argument. And I I took a month off of writing. I started I did a bunch of meditating. I did, like, you know, some, like, writing prompts, and and I did a lot of reading. And I ended up at this topic.

Shira Chess: 04:22

I so one of the books that really influenced me was Jeffrey Sconce's Haunted Media, which talks a lot about sort of how discourse on new forms of media often has like esoteric echoes. Right? And so he one of the the most well known arguments of the book is talking specifically about telegraphy and how telegraphy and spiritualism kind of happened concurrently. Right? So I was thinking about that, and at the same time I was reading Josh Gunn's Modern Occult Rhetoric, and I was thinking about some of the things that he was writing.

Shira Chess: 04:59

And and then and then reading Eric Davis, and I just started asking myself the question, well, if, you know, if in these past moments or in these historical moments, if if these innovative points in history where we've innovated new kinds of media were concurrent with esoteric thinking, then surely techno paganism at the core and like sort of the the the Internet and it like the number of techno pagans that were in some way part of the forming of the Internet. And I don't mean everyone, but but there was, you know, there was definitely an uneven mix at times that surely that must mean something. And it doesn't necessarily mean something in terms of a causal element, but, you know, a conversational one. Right? Like, it was a discourse.

Shira Chess: 05:59

And I started to think about the how those flows of information occurred and what do they mean? And then at the same time, I started pulling thread forward to the now. Right? Like, what does that mean now? What does that you know, how did that play out?

Shira Chess: 06:14

How how when we're talking about the Internet now, what is that you know, what what were the ramifications of the specifics of technopaganism? And so that was sort of how I got there. And it was it was a really it was a new topic for me. I just sort of jumped in, and and it was a lot of fun.

AP Strange: 06:35

Yeah. Yeah. Because I I I could imagine for a lot of people that the idea of techno paganism or seeing kind of occult communities online might be a little bewildering wondering like kinda how we got here and how oddly mainstream a lot of this kinda stuff is. And on the same note, kind of how fractured we are as a society when it seems to me the initial promise of the world wide web was that it was gonna bring us all together. Right?

AP Strange: 07:05

Sure. Sure. Yeah.

Shira Chess: 07:06

Yeah. I mean, like, you know, there was a lot of I found myself in in the last few years sitting with the optimism that we had in the early nineties and even up through the mid nineties about what the Internet could possibly be. I'm also I'm working on the Monde 2,000 history at the same time. So I've been, like, very much swimming in nineties culture in a lot of ways, thinking about like, what what was it that we thought we were doing? And then looking at what's going on now and thinking about what that, you know, where did we land?

Shira Chess: 07:47

And, yeah, the internet is not what anybody thought it was going to be except for, of course, you know, the folks that were into cyberpunk and saw that cyberpunk was, you know, a dystopic, not, you know, maybe not Bezos who seems to have thought it was a business plan.

AP Strange: 08:06

Well, right. And the unfortunate reality now though, I think a big part of it, this is just my personal thought on it, is that a lot of these tech CEO types are not technologists or engineers like the people that invented the Internet. They're just venture capitalists in a lot of ways. Sure. So they re they've read those dystopian novels, but they thought it was cool.

AP Strange: 08:33

Like, they thought it was a good thing. Right?

Shira Chess: 08:35

I mean, everybody thought it was cool. Right? Like, you know, I mean, there wasn't people weren't, you know, reading Neuromancer thinking that it didn't sound cool, but also understood on some level, I think, enough people that it was not, you know, the goal plan.

AP Strange: 08:50

Right. Yeah. And unfortunately, the people with all the money seem to to wanna push us there.

Shira Chess: 09:00

Yep.

AP Strange: 09:01

I mean, one in particular seems to come up at least a couple times throughout the book, which is Elon Musk because you're talking about his his appearances on Joe Rogan and elsewhere talking about all of reality being a hologram or, like, holographic reality or, you you know Yeah.

Shira Chess: 09:23

Which is Simulation hypothesis. Yeah.

AP Strange: 09:26

Stimulation. That's the word I was looking for. Yeah. Which, you know, I think a lot of occult schools of thought think of reality as being malleable or permeable or illusory in some way. But Sure.

AP Strange: 09:40

But, yeah, I think a lot of people get duped into thinking that Musk is a brainiac, and I'm not sure how it happens. But

Shira Chess: 09:51

So one of the things that I thought that I thought was really wild as I was, like, researching the way that that simulation moved online as, you know, in its memetic way was that you know? So, obviously, there are there are you know? I I I talk about in terms of Gnosticism. I talk about in terms of Grant Morrison's The Invisibles and then The Matrix, and I talk about, like, sort of older versions of, you know, the simulation hypothesis. But, like, sort of the the current iteration came from Nick Bostrom essay from 2001.

Shira Chess: 10:25

I believe it was 2001. And and so he wrote this this philosophical essay, and I should add, I I I'm pretty sure I've been told that Bostrom is an accelerationist, and I think that that's important in all of this. But but in any case, the so I mean, like, you know, it's his it was his article, whatever. And but when you search it online, a lot of people attribute it to Elon Musk at this point. It's Like, people will, like, talk about Elon Musk's simulation theory, and I'm like, is it?

Shira Chess: 11:00

Yeah. I mean, it kind of is now. Right? Like, I I think he gets to own it in his weird way.

AP Strange: 11:06

Yeah. Just like he gets to own a whole lot of other ideas that we use. Indeed. But yeah, I mean to me the simulation hypothesis always made sense in respect to the fact that I thought the argument was if we were living in a simulation, we'd have no way to prove it.

Shira Chess: 11:28

Sure.

AP Strange: 11:29

Which a lot of people have taken to mean we definitely live in a simulation problem and we don't need to prove it.

Shira Chess: 11:36

So Oh, I mean, the telephone game of people teaching complex, you know, philosophical theories on TikTok is, like, wild and uncomfortable. Right? Like, people who are at one point, I I saw somebody saying, well, we know we live in a simulation when three d graphics get so realistic that you can't tell them apart from from the real thing. That's how we know. And I'm like, is it?

Shira Chess: 12:02

But also, I don't think we're there exactly. But even if it was even if we were, that's not. Right? Like, that's that's such a wild version of a telephone game of an actual academic theory, whether or not I agree with it, that got sort of twisted into new things. And I mean, you see that a lot on TikTok, even beyond sort of the esoteric stuff.

Shira Chess: 12:30

I mean, sort of like this idea where somebody will take a very basic scholarly context or concept and, like, take it out of context, and it just becomes a completely new thing.

AP Strange: 12:41

Yeah. And, I mean, of course, that's been happening for ages, but it Sure. It it is accelerated these days.

Shira Chess: 12:47

It oh, yeah. Because

AP Strange: 12:49

most advanced philosophical concepts or scientific theorems really can't be explained in like a ten second TikTok video or whatever, you know, like.

Shira Chess: 13:01

Right.

AP Strange: 13:02

Well, I was, I guess I was gonna say like you mentioned the accelerationist thing because the the whole hyperstition idea from Nick Land, it seems like Nick Land has kind of gone in that direction as well. Right? So Sure. Yeah.

Shira Chess: 13:20

Sure. And, I mean, hyperstition is another version of sort of magical theory that became very pragmatic and sort of it sits in conversation with manifestation. Right? But in this very sort of lofty semi academic way that Nick Lan does.

AP Strange: 13:42

Yeah. Yeah.

Shira Chess: 13:43

And, of course, you know, I mean and, of course, he is very outwardly accelerationist.

AP Strange: 13:48

Right. Right. Yeah. It kind of it makes me wince sometimes when people are talking about occults and paranormal subjects, and they reference, like, hyperstition because they're basically referencing him and I'm like, yeah. Well, there's better ways to talk about that, I think.

Shira Chess: 14:05

Sure.

AP Strange: 14:06

Yeah. But this all kind of, I guess, overlaps with your other writing when you said that you've been writing about video games forever because this whole simulation hypothesis leads people down the path of thinking of everybody else as an NPC, which has been really disturbing for me to witness online in recent years.

Shira Chess: 14:33

So do you think Well, I mean

AP Strange: 14:34

writing prepared you for that kind of subject?

Shira Chess: 14:38

For sure. I mean, definitely. I I you know, simulation theory was one of the first things that I was, like, really grappling with as I was sort of, like, working through the content of this book and trying to figure out, like, what is it that I'm trying to say here. Right? And I was looking a lot you know, because I you know, looking at sort of the simulation hypothesis, you can see all of its esoteric roots very clearly.

Shira Chess: 15:04

It's not hidden, but also if you're if you don't understand what to look for, it's also not obvious. And but then I kept getting caught at this question, right? I was like, well, but like, what if I'm arguing this and actually it's true? And where I landed was very much like, you know, I am neither a physicist nor a metaphysicist. So that's like above my pay grade.

Shira Chess: 15:27

I'm not capable of making a sound argument as to whether or not we're living in a simulation, but I am you know, I I have been studying games for a long time. And so if Elon Musk thinks that we're living in a simulation, then I think that the most helpful thing to do is to understand the discourse. Right? To unpack what what does that game look like? What what are the I mean, obviously, it looks like our world, but, like, what are the what's the game design?

Shira Chess: 15:59

Right? What are the mechanics? How is how is what is this game that we're playing theoretically, but also actually? Because the reality is is that if the richest man in the world says we're living in in a simulation, then in some ways we kind of are. Right?

Shira Chess: 16:13

Like, it it becomes a nonstarter. We are because he's so carefully defining the edges of our world that he gets to say that, and it is true to some extent. It's the simulation that he's designing. Right.

AP Strange: 16:30

Yeah. I mean, at a certain point, it becomes irrelevant whether the theory is correct or not it's the fact that he believes it and you have to kind of meet him where he is to understand like where he's coming from or where he's gonna go right so and I had a whole chapter in the book that I actually I dog eared because I was gonna come back to it which is the rituals as games and the gamification of reality because it really does kinda feel like a lot of a lot of people in power are treating reality as a game. Know?

Shira Chess: 17:08

Mhmm. Yeah. And, well and I've been I was thinking about that just this past week because I've been working on a piece on, Backrooms. And so another point of, thinking that through is thinking about, like, the term no clip. Right?

Shira Chess: 17:22

This idea that so are you are you familiar with the backrooms?

AP Strange: 17:26

The backrooms. Yes. You might have to define no clip and

Shira Chess: 17:30

Okay. Refine me with a

AP Strange: 17:32

lot of it.

Shira Chess: 17:32

So okay. Yeah. Yeah. So in the Backrooms and now now I'm, like, panicking because I don't have the text in front of me. But the original creepypasta that Backrooms comes from, it was just it was called The Backrooms also.

Shira Chess: 17:48

It was The Backrooms Creepypasta. It was 2019, and it was like, you know, like all creepypastas, it was two paragraphs in a photo. Right? Like, it was there there was not a whole lot of there there, but but it basically is something like, you know, you have to be careful or you might no clip into another reality. Right?

Shira Chess: 18:06

And no clip is video game speak for, like, a disruption of barrier. Right? Like, an expected barrier that does not work right. So, like, if you're playing a game and your your avatar slides through something that it's not supposed to slide through. Does that make sense?

AP Strange: 18:26

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I know

Shira Chess: 18:27

what you're saying now. Okay. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Shira Chess: 18:29

So that's that's what that term means, but then it gets, like, applied in this weird way in the backrooms and is kind of this good reminder that we're all increasingly thinking of ourselves as digital objects. Right? We're we're so we're becoming the digital objects that we're we're reconciling with, and that's, you know, messy.

AP Strange: 18:52

It is. I mean, especially when we identify with it so strongly. Right? And we carefully select an avatar online, which itself, I think you know it somewhere in the book, comes from from Sure. Metaphysical or spiritual practice, the avatar Sure.

AP Strange: 19:11

Word. You know?

Shira Chess: 19:12

Well, certainly, the the if the like, the theosophy appropriation of that concept. Right? Like, I mean, like because one of the things that I found myself really uncomfortable with early on is thinking about the ways that so much of Western esotericism is based on Eastern belief systems taken out of context. Right?

AP Strange: 19:39

Right.

Shira Chess: 19:39

And so something might not necessarily be a cult in that, you know, like, the traditional sense of the word, you know, that of something that is unseen or, you know, hidden. Right? Yeah. But the but then when it gets pulled into another culture, it becomes reshrouded with this new mythology. Right?

Shira Chess: 20:05

So I mean, avatar is one of those terms, right? That got like sort of, you know, shaken baked into a different culture and then used in a different way. Another one that I think of a lot is Tulpas. Right? That how how Tulpas were not necessarily esoteric in the way that they were being treated, but then they got, you know, sort of, you know, Alexander David Neal brought it, you know, to Western by, I believe, she was a the auspice.

Shira Chess: 20:34

And then it got sort of, like, recontextualized. And now, like, you know, the kids are all making Tulpas online.

AP Strange: 20:42

Right. Well, think John Keel had a big hand in that as well, the Uthologist, because he makes reference to David Neal in the Mothman Prophecies, I believe. Then I think that's where a lot of people online have picked it up from is John Kiel's reference to magic and mystery in Tibet.

Shira Chess: 21:01

Sure. But but again, that's not he's all Right? Yeah. Like, I mean Yeah. Again, it's a telephone game.

Shira Chess: 21:07

Right?

AP Strange: 21:08

It all is. But I mean, the occult is kind of that.

Shira Chess: 21:12

Sure.

AP Strange: 21:12

Sometimes it's a, well often it's appropriation, but in the modern age of occultism it seems like a lot of it started right at the Victorian era, which is going to be problematic from the jump, that whole era. I did wanna get to that as well where like kind of at the very beginning of the book you were kind of talking about an entity, the Loeb, conjuring Loeb, but

Shira Chess: 21:47

It's pronounced Loeb. Did he Loeb? I it is. I asked to the the Steph Maj Swanson, the the the person who initially generated lube. And because I had been absolutely pronouncing it lube, and I I was told that it is a homonym for lube, for, like, ear lube.

AP Strange: 22:09

Okay. Alright. Yeah. Because I mean, that kinda gets to the whole like Slenderman esque concept. But from there, it's like it seemed like you kinda had to for readers that might not know, give like a little background to all the esoteric occult schools of thought that are going to play into the book.

AP Strange: 22:28

And I was like, well, that's a tall order. It is. I had to kind of commend you for that because, I mean, did you have a background interest in in occultism and, magical practice prior, or was this all stuff you had to research just for the book?

Shira Chess: 22:47

I mean, a little of column a, a little of column b. Right? Like, I knew enough to get me started, but not so much that I didn't have to do a good deal of research to get there. Right? Yeah.

Shira Chess: 22:58

And early on, there was like a lot of sort of like me trying to to figure out connections between things. But it definitely part of what I wanted to do here was I wanted I wanted to write a book that both people who were already invested in occult thinking and also people who were not were equally able to read this and get something out of it. Right? I was trying to speak to multiple audiences at once, which is, you know, I don't I don't recommend it. It's a tough road to know.

Shira Chess: 23:36

Yeah. No. Totally. But I yeah. So I realized early on that if I want readers that are not just people who buy occult books, that I was going to have to explain some baseline things and just sort of have like a little bit of a cheat sheet of like, okay, here are the things you need to go know to get through this book.

Shira Chess: 23:59

Right? Like, here's the baseline of the different traditions. And then at the same time, I didn't wanna spend so much time on that that that was the full book, and I certainly didn't want to bore the rest of y'all.

AP Strange: 24:12

Right. Well, no. Yeah. I think it was I think it was it's pretty in-depth, but it's the appropriate length because that's I started from there, know. I read the introduction.

AP Strange: 24:24

I'm thinking, wow. She's really going for it because it I I I find it commendable because when I'm writing about these subjects, I kind of assume people basically are coming to me knowing a bunch of stuff already, and I don't wanna get bogged down with all of that. Sure. I realize if I ever wrote a book, I would have to do that. I was I'm dreading the idea.

AP Strange: 24:48

But throughout the book, I think you kind of the reason I asked about your background interest in it was because you do a really good job of remaining objective throughout the book where you're just kind of laying it out and removing your any biases that you might've had. So which I really appreciate because even when you're getting to the point you're talking about TikTok, reality shifters and topomanci and some ideas that people might find really bananas. It's like a lesser writer would be making fun of it and stuff, but you're just kind of holding it up a sort of a modern folklore or modern magical practice, which I thought was you kind of reserve judgment on the reality of it and set that aside, just examine the cultural impact.

Shira Chess: 25:46

Yeah. I don't I I early on, I felt like there was it was not fair of me to make fun of people for their beliefs. I mean, like, the world is wonderful and horrible and strange. Right? And Yeah.

Shira Chess: 26:02

I don't know. I don't know that hegemonic beliefs are any more credible than non hegemonic beliefs. You know? And it wasn't it didn't feel like my place to critique people, and it felt mean spirited to do so. And so I tried to take a very invitational approach, and then I I ended up sort of labeling it as the Chapel Perilous.

Shira Chess: 26:26

Right? That I was I was writing this from the position of The Chapel Perilous, which I think was a helpful way for me to also remind myself as I was writing not to not to get judgy. You know? Which there are there are moments where that does get hard. And I think at times, even where it was the hardest, sometimes I like double down on it.

Shira Chess: 26:50

Right? I think in that reality shifter chapter, I very specifically double down and I was like, look, rather than just saying, I don't know, let let's take them at their word because why why why is it you know, it's helpful to again, if we're studying discourse, then it's really helpful to take people at their word.

AP Strange: 27:09

Right. Exactly. You need to know what they're saying. And I think you you quote Eric Davis as saying, it's a process of taking it taking well, let's see. What was it?

AP Strange: 27:20

Now I'm scared. Now I'm gonna screw it up.

Shira Chess: 27:23

It's Take you seriously,

AP Strange: 27:25

but not literally.

Shira Chess: 27:26

Yeah. Yeah. That's what it was. From high weirdness, which really that that book was helpful in thinking about it in that way. Right?

Shira Chess: 27:33

Like that he was he was very gentle with his with the people that he wrote about in that book, but not fanish either. And that was sort of where I was trying to was certainly trying to emulate that in my own writing.

AP Strange: 27:50

Yeah, it's good. And I mean, the Robert Anton Wilson kind of model of, I guess, like maybe logic maybe logic is is helpful in looking at these things, which is kind of how I've always tried to do it. And I know I have a lot of listeners that are Robert Anton Wilson fans, so they'll pick up on that. But Sure. But Davis's book, I haven't actually read it.

AP Strange: 28:22

I know a lot of people have enjoyed that. That that focus is more on Philip k Dick and Wilson and the McKennas. Right?

Shira Chess: 28:31

Yep. Yep. Yeah. It's like it's sort of like three case studies of of megatrips. Right?

Shira Chess: 28:39

Like of like, you know and yeah, similarly sort of studying the discourse.

AP Strange: 28:46

Yeah. Okay. Because, I mean, they all come up in some way, shape or form in the course of this book Because I mean far from just covering the current state of things and the types of well high weirdness and magical thinking online, you you go right back to the origins and discuss how, like, the origin of Silicon Valley was kinda seeped in a lot of that sort of hippie pagan culture there.

Shira Chess: 29:19

Or, like, post hippie, I'd say. Right? Like, sort of the the the hippie residue and that there was, you know, when Margo Adler did a survey in the eighties, so Margo Adler who wrote Drawing Down the Moon, she did a survey of pagans in the eighties and discovered that the vast majority of them had careers in and relating to computing. And I was like, well, that's a really interesting statistic. Right?

Shira Chess: 29:56

Like, that that that actually speaks volumes because we're also talking about the time period that's just after the satanic panic. Right? So the Internet would seem very attractive to people with alternative spiritualities. It's, you know, there's sort of it's both anonymous and not anonymous at the same time. Right?

Shira Chess: 30:14

Like, there's a there's a method of tracking one another, but not not necessarily in a scary way. It's certainly not then. And it was it was also, you know, the BBS has created a lot of text file dumps. Right? Because, of course, it prioritized distinct texts that other people couldn't easily get.

Shira Chess: 30:38

Well, you know, I mean, there are two things that fall into that category, and they're generally either porn or or occult. Right? So the BBSs had both. Right? The BBSs were not shy about either of those things.

Shira Chess: 30:54

And so PodsNet developed it was originally MagicNet that was a it was it was sort of a collection of the different BBSs that were related to esoteric themes loosely, you know, or not loosely or not loosely, I guess, depending on the the BBS. But so there was this giant text file dump out there of all of these rare occult texts that that suddenly were easily accessible to people who had the understandings of it. And again, it was like an easy place to kind of like meet people with similar interests at a moment where that wasn't necessarily safe in the real world. And that seems notable. Right?

Shira Chess: 31:45

And so, like, I like to say that that early Internet both occulted and de occulted alternative spiritualities at the same time.

AP Strange: 31:56

Yeah. Absolutely. And as you say, it helped connect a lot of people that otherwise would have been alone with their interests. And even even nowadays, there's parts of the country where bookstore bookstores are harder to come by or you know it's a heavily religious area so you're unlikely to find a new age or a cult bookshop and of course you can order books online now but there's so much that's just available to read and and and or stuff that's out there and people you can connect with via via social media, which I guess is a blessing and a curse for a lot of people.

Shira Chess: 32:35

It is. It is.

AP Strange: 32:39

Well, I I think that what you just said and what I just said, something that comes back, there's a balance with all of this stuff, and it seems like there's a good and a bad to every aspect of of this study. So cutting that middle path in the chapel perilous is probably the best course. The PKD thing made me think of something I had written at one point, which also comes up in your book as far as the different kinds of reality go, and that's the the prevalence of Mandela effects as an online phenomenon these days. Yeah. Did you wanna get into the Mandela effects at all?

AP Strange: 33:20

Because I don't I don't

Shira Chess: 33:21

Oh, I'd love to talk about Mandela effects.

AP Strange: 33:24

Internet thing, but it's the virality of it online has kind of gotten way out of hand at this point.

Shira Chess: 33:30

I actually do think it's an Internet thing.

AP Strange: 33:32

Okay.

Shira Chess: 33:32

Because I think that whether or not it was something that was happening before, it took people from a distance being able to communicate with one another rapidly in order for it to snowball into a phenomenon.

AP Strange: 33:49

Right. Okay.

Shira Chess: 33:51

Right? So it it took sort of it took that initial website that was I think it like, I I was that 2012? Somewhere in there. Not to, you know, cause any conspiracy theory and new ones. But the but it was I think it was around between like two thousand and twenty twelve, there was there was a conversation that happened at Dragon Con, and it it snowballed into a thing.

Shira Chess: 34:23

And it was, you know, it, of course, started with people arguing over whether or not at that point Nelson Mandela had died in the eighties and, you know, because people had these vivid memories of Nelson Mandela dying in the nineteen eighties. And, I mean, and I should add, you know, and and then they started posting online and people started posting other things. And I it like, you know, nobody from, of course, from the from South Africa that I have encountered has ever been like, nope. That's true. Right?

Shira Chess: 34:59

Like, I mean, Mandel Effect that particular Mandel Effect is very, very, very western. But at the same time, you know, the so, you know, like all of these other little ones, you know, there it's always, of course, like sort of brand memory. So, you know, was it Berenstain or Berenstain? Right? Is it you know, did did Sinbad make a movie in the nineteen nineties?

Shira Chess: 35:29

And it's sort of like it's very, like, brand centric and very culturally centric because it has to be because that's that's what we share. And the you know, I see Mandela Effect as being sort of like the the edge of the rabbit hole that a lot of people sort of peer into regarding the simulation hypothesis. Right? Like, it's just at the edge where it's just sort of like this fun conversation that you can have. Do you, you know, you're a cocktail party, debate whether or not you're do you remember Berenstain or Berenstain?

Shira Chess: 36:02

I don't know. And but then, you know, as you sort of fall into that rabbit hole and start looking at, you know, different, you know, like glitches in the matrix and people start getting more invested in that. And that's on a more personal level. Right. And and then all of a sudden, that sort of like snowballs into simulation hypothesis and the really like sort of the deep ends of the rabbit hole, which of course is like, you know, David Eich and the sort of then then it's sort of like a part of what I write about is talking about it in terms of Gnosticism.

Shira Chess: 36:41

And so by the time you get to that deep end of the rabbit hole, it actually goes full circle and goes back to like the Archons and the Demiurge and Right? Like Right. But there's a there's a line there. And it's not that these things didn't exist before the Internet. It's that the Internet moved information around differently.

Shira Chess: 37:02

And also, it's representative of how we see the world differently. Right? We we are all experiencing dramatically different realities than one another in a way that like, maybe we were doing that in the twentieth century. We, I mean, we definitely were doing it to some extent in the twentieth century, but certainly not to the extreme that we are now.

AP Strange: 37:28

Right.

Shira Chess: 37:28

And so again, if you're looking at discourse rather than causality, it becomes sort of interesting to think about how our esoteric theories and our belief systems really do so nicely map onto our technological innovations.

AP Strange: 37:45

Yeah, and the technological versions of things, the terms that arise because of technology are supplanting a lot of the old esoteric ideas that would have been thought of as just kind of psychical ideas or magical ideas before. Glitches in the matrix as I understand it includes such things as like synchronicity and deja vu when we already had words for those things that already had their meetings before. Right? So

Shira Chess: 38:17

Sure. Yeah. No. Fair. Yeah.

Shira Chess: 38:20

But there's but, again, it goes back to that sort of, like, gamification of reality. Right? Like, a glitch in the matrix is very much a we're we're seeing the edges of this technological reality. I mean, have, of course, been simulation theories for a long time. But that Nick Bostrom essay wasn't saying, are we, you know, are we, you know, living in a false reality?

Shira Chess: 38:46

It was asking, you know, the title of it is, are we living in a computer simulation?

AP Strange: 38:51

Yeah. Specifically computers. Yeah.

Shira Chess: 38:53

Right. You know, we're we are we are dealing with the resonances of the fact that we ourselves are becoming more digital.

AP Strange: 39:04

Yeah. And I've always tried to resist that because when I first heard of people talking about computer simulation as the simulation hypothesis. I'm like, isn't that just like Plato's shadows on a wall with news Yeah.

Shira Chess: 39:17

Like Yeah. Yeah.

AP Strange: 39:21

And I've noticed this creep into a lot of different paranormal subjects too where it used to be that if you had an encounter with weirdness and like a UFO encounter and then all of a sudden you had all these new ideas and knowledge, it would be kind of like a visionary experience or a telepathic communication And now people just unreservedly call it a download. That's just become the new word for it. Like, oh, I got a download and now all of a sudden I can speak this other language. Just I'm uncomfortable with it, but I guess that's the way we're going.

Shira Chess: 39:59

Yeah. No. It's it it is uncomfortable, though. Right? Like, it is I mean, we are simultaneously at a moment where we are questioning the humanity of the nonhuman entities that we're we're, you know, dealing with.

Shira Chess: 40:17

At the same time, mechanizing ourselves in how we talk about ourselves. And those two two things simultaneously are are frightening.

AP Strange: 40:29

Yeah. I think so. I mean, I'm glad to hear you say that because sometimes I feel like I'm going nuts over here because No.

Shira Chess: 40:38

I agree. That's pretty frightening.

AP Strange: 40:41

Well, yeah. Mean, it gets into the concept of of what is called AI, and I hate to even call it that because I don't like ascribing something like intelligence or consciousness or ascensions to a model program, like a programmed piece of software, right? Right. But the language, the way they play around with the language has duped a lot of people into thinking that it's the same thing as human intelligence. Yes.

AP Strange: 41:15

That human intelligence should aspire to be more mechanical. So this is it's definitely a shift.

Shira Chess: 41:23

Or that it somehow has superior intelligence to us that it it is, you know, that, you know, it is I I talk about it very much in terms of, you know, humans courting noncorporeal entities, which, of course, you know, we've always done that.

AP Strange: 41:40

Yeah. But in esoteric terms, it might be more similar to, like, the story of the Golem, you know, creating something non thinking that that could cause a lot of damage. Right? So

Shira Chess: 41:54

Sure. Yeah. But a Golem is still a non corporeal entity, right? That that gets, you know or it starts off that way. I guess, eventually, it's corporeal.

Shira Chess: 42:01

But, you know, it the the sentiment is noncorporeal. Right?

AP Strange: 42:05

Yeah. Well, yeah, the the process that gets you there, I guess, the indication. Yeah. But as far as non corporeal spirits go, I mean, you you kinda get into that quite a bit in the in the book as well. I I think it's toward the end you're talking a lot about like demons.

AP Strange: 42:28

Yeah. And

Shira Chess: 42:30

Although my my definition for demon is pretty loose. I'm pretty, like, I I spend a non negligible amount of time, like, basically saying, well, you know, I mean, like, so John Dee and and oh gosh. Now it's it's definitely late. Who was John Dee's friend?

AP Strange: 42:49

I heard Kelly.

Shira Chess: 42:51

Thank you. So Dee and Kelly were, like, conjuring all of these things that some of them are angels and some of them were demons and some of them lied and some of them didn't. But how would you know? Right? Of course.

Shira Chess: 43:00

So, like, they're both the same thing. Let's say that they're both the same thing just for the sake of argument. And then, you know, if you are doing a you know, if the spiritualists conjuring ghosts well, I mean, if you a entity is not to be relied upon for honesty, then how would you know? Right? Like, you know, and, of course, you throw in the gins there.

Shira Chess: 43:23

You know? And if, you know, while you're at it, you might as well throw in fairies. And then Jacques Filet, of course, says that fairy aliens and fairies are the same thing. And then, like, then all of a sudden, have, like, this big soup of of, like, noncorporeal entities that all essentially have similar patterns. And, of course, like, obviously, to a practicing magician, those distinctions would matter.

Shira Chess: 43:45

However, for the sake of argument, let's just, like, say that they're not all noncorporeal entities. Right? And, like, we have Right. Humans have been grappling with the correct way to talk to and about noncorporeal entities, you know, for humanity. Right?

Shira Chess: 44:01

And and thinking about what that might possibly mean. And so this is just the latest iteration of that. Right? Or should we and we can take some from that. Like, you know, the questions the questions that we're asking now are questions that we've asked before.

Shira Chess: 44:18

Do we do we yell at them, or do we do we act really nice and ask nice things? Do we want them to be sycophantic, or do we want to see their true nature? All of those things are necessarily baked into this broader discourse of human beings trying to talk to something that is that that is not us.

AP Strange: 44:43

Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully, you know, in some ways making it work for us. Right? Instead of against But then you kind of get into some of the discourse around the idea of whether with demonology, for instance, it's what people debate whether it's okay to to bind and use demons and then vanish them or if you should just try being nice to them and asking for a favor.

Shira Chess: 45:12

Yeah. There was a big demon war on TikTok several years ago over that where they were they were debating whether or, you know, do you ask nicely or do you yell at them? Right? And and, like, sort of this all, you know, the Solomonic folk were were like, no, you have to yell at them. That's what we do.

Shira Chess: 45:29

And, you know, the the demonologists were like, no, you know, you ask nicely and and do it favors and then everything will be fine. And so, like, this is but that's also not not part of what we talk about when we talk about AI. Right? Or certainly and when I say AI, I don't mean actual AI. Right?

Shira Chess: 45:50

Like, so, of course, we have AI around us all the time. Right? We have, you know, our spell checks and our, you know, all of our different things in our lives that make our lives actually better. I'm talking about artificial general intelligence. I'm talking about this thing that does not exist and yet is being treated like it does exist with chatbots.

AP Strange: 46:08

Mhmm. Yeah. Yes. There are people that have a vested interest in making us believe it exists or that it will within a few years. Yeah.

Shira Chess: 46:16

Yes. Sort of that we're at the edge of conjuring a world eating demon that nobody really wants, but, you know, but everybody is working really hard to find for some reason.

AP Strange: 46:31

Yeah. Yeah. It's got some Cthulhu vibes to it, I think.

Shira Chess: 46:36

Indeed.

AP Strange: 46:40

Yeah. I I think I people I have noticed this, and I've seen people this is just anecdotal. It's not something I've studied, but I have seen people make reference to the fact that when they're talking to chat GPT or something, they try to be polite.

Shira Chess: 46:56

Yeah, just in case. Yeah.

AP Strange: 46:59

Just in case it does take over, they don't wanna be the first ones against the wall. But I have heard people say that they do it kind of without thinking. Right? Like it's Right. Yeah.

AP Strange: 47:09

And that's that's

Shira Chess: 47:10

Well, because our chatbots are too human presenting. Right? Like, that's what we're being sold with our chatbots. You know, they have cute names and they, you know, they're meant to respond in semi human ways. And that's, you know, we we often use human like pronouns for them.

Shira Chess: 47:31

And that that's that's not helpful, certainly.

AP Strange: 47:34

Right. Yeah.

Shira Chess: 47:37

But all of those conversations we had we've had about, you know, other noncorporeal entities. It's the same it's the same deal.

AP Strange: 47:44

Yeah. And all of the wonderful sci fi that's been written over the years warning us not to do that. Again,

Shira Chess: 47:53

people who took cyberpunk as a challenge, not as a warning.

AP Strange: 47:57

Right. They read William Gibson and said, hold my beer. Yeah. Well, I I think the other half of this though, I mean, getting back kind of to the gamification and things like reality hacking and culture jamming is that sometimes you can use this as a way to disrupt some negative power systems, right? Like you kind of get into the history of discordians and chaos magicians and stuff online and a lot of those different kinds of aspects.

AP Strange: 48:39

So how about some of these, like, more fun and goofy presenting ones?

Shira Chess: 48:44

Yeah. Well, I mean, like, so I really got into this whole notion of reality hacking. So again, I'm working on the Mono 2,000 book. And the second I I assume you know what Mono should I should I explain what Mono 2,000 is for listeners? I don't know.

Shira Chess: 49:00

Do people know what Mono two I have no idea what people know anymore. That's worth it. Yeah. Fair enough. Mando 2,000 was a magazine from it it it that ran from 1989 until 1997, and it predates wired magazine.

Shira Chess: 49:19

It actually, Mondo 2,000 wasn't the first iteration of the magazine. So the first iteration, the very first one was called High Frontiers. It was a pro hallucinogen magazine, and it was vaguely, partially, a little bit funded by Terrence McKenna. And then they lasted four issues. They were some of the the second issue is pretty epically famous.

Shira Chess: 49:45

It's this giant pink thing. And then the the the second they changed their name because they realized that they weren't gonna ever sell ads being a, like, a hallucinogen friendly magazine as its central premise and a good figure. And so During the Reagan

AP Strange: 50:05

era, no no way.

Shira Chess: 50:06

Right. No. I mean, but they were, like, they were going hard during the Reagan era. So, you know, hats off to them. And they in the second iteration, they renamed themselves to Reality Hackers.

Shira Chess: 50:19

And they it started because they were all so they all lived in or not lived, but some of them lived there, some of them didn't in this. It was a mini mansion in Berkeley Hills, And they made the magazine out of there, and they they lived there. They hung out there. They made the magazine there. And they were all sitting around one day, and there were some hackers in the room.

Shira Chess: 50:38

And this and one person who was part of was a staffer at that time, Allen Lindell, goes, well, we're not hackers. We're reality hackers. And it like, everybody's like, yeah. And so it ended up sticking, but it only stuck for two issues because in 1988, not enough people knew what the word hackerman, and people thought it kept getting shelved in the crime section because they thought like literally hacking people up. Right.

Shira Chess: 51:04

And yeah. And and then in '89, they changed their name again to Mondo 2,000, which is a whole story. I'm actually so I'm also I should I don't think I said this. I'm co authoring the book with Ari Serious, who was the former editor in chief of the magazine. Yeah.

Shira Chess: 51:23

Because I you know, like a challenge. Don't know. So no. It's it's great. If he's listening.

Shira Chess: 51:32

Hi, Ken. So but in any case, so we so there was this moment where every they were all talking about this idea of reality hacking, And it really was sort of like not It was definitely related to chaos magic that was starting to brew, and this idea that magic didn't necessarily need to be about about, like, you know, old school rituals and perfume. You know, it it wasn't it wasn't the OTO, right? It's a great quote from Genesis Purage that I absolutely love. Genesis Purage in the psychic bible says, the magic of the temple wasn't the magic of the golden dawn designed for the stately Victorian manor.

Shira Chess: 52:20

It was the magic designed for the blank eyed TV flattened prematurely abyss dwelling youth of the late twentieth century. And that that quote really sums it up for me. Right? Like, what it was that everybody was trying to do. They it it was suddenly every and everything in culture at that moment was DIY.

Shira Chess: 52:36

Right? Like, so even reality hackers itself was taking its cues from Whole Earth Catalog. It was sort of it it was the more esoteric version of that. And then it became Mando two thousand, and that's its own, you know, little saga. But I don't remember where we started with this con but but essentially, like yeah.

Shira Chess: 52:56

No. So it was like it was all connected that time. And again, there was sort of this sense that the Internet was part of that. Right? That the Internet could be this space where the corporations didn't have to own the memes.

Shira Chess: 53:10

Right? Everybody was taught everybody in the counterculture in the late eighties and early nineties was talking about memes. Not not the memes that we have today, but like, you know, the the passing of information. And of course, like Dawkins is very much an atheist. He's very, very clear on that point.

Shira Chess: 53:26

But he but this idea of memes was very attractive to people in the counterculture. Right? It was this actionable way of moving information. It was a way of thinking about information differently and information flow, and they saw the Internet as being very central to that. And and and to this idea of destroying culture.

Shira Chess: 53:46

Right? Like, back in the nineties, everybody was talking about this idea of mono culture that we had to we had to ruin that. We had to destroy consensus reality. And, I mean, this is what it looks like to destroy consensus reality, I guess.

AP Strange: 53:58

Yeah. I mean, I feel like I would have been on board with that at the time, and now I kinda wish that there was a little bit more stability.

Shira Chess: 54:08

Yeah. Indeed. I like, bring back the monoculture, man. I don't know.

AP Strange: 54:14

I feel like

Shira Chess: 54:15

I mean, maybe not. Maybe not. I don't know. But like I say that out loud, I'm like, oh.

AP Strange: 54:20

Status quo

Shira Chess: 54:21

1984 is a monoculture.

AP Strange: 54:23

Right. The status quo was not so great, but the, you know, the complete and utter anarchy of perception and perspective is not necessarily great either because you almost feel like you almost you don't have any common ground to stand with people.

Shira Chess: 54:42

Right.

AP Strange: 54:42

Which in itself I think is an illusion. I think most of us have more in common than we tend to think. I mean we all want to eat and survive and have a place to sleep at night. Sure. That could be a guiding principle for all of us.

AP Strange: 55:03

But yeah, I mean it seems like, I think you're absolutely right, and when I think about the 90s, I mean I was pretty young in the 90s, but there was a it felt like there was a lot of paranoia and and and disappointment with reality and and institution.

Shira Chess: 55:20

Yeah. But, like, now looking back, I don't know. I mean, I was I was in my late teens and then early twenties in the nineties. Right? And so, I mean, I look back at that culture now and not not just in terms of, like, nostalgia for my own, you know, stuff.

Shira Chess: 55:39

But looking at the culture that we produced in the nineties was so much more real than what we have now, you know? And I think that that was the thing that when I so I started the Mon to 2000 thing started because I started reading them for this book. Right? I had started looking at them and thinking about them as I was doing research for this book. I hadn't I was not a Mono 2,000 person when I was back in the nineties, you know, I might have read an issue.

Shira Chess: 56:05

I vaguely recall something. But but I was so shook when I started looking at those old issues of the magazine, remembering what culture used to look like and how real it used to feel.

AP Strange: 56:24

Yeah. Yeah. It's all it's kind of a bummer.

Shira Chess: 56:31

It it kinda is. Right? Like, you know, when everyone's trying to make zines now and bring back the zines. Right? And I'm I'm all for bringing back the zines, but I I I think that, like, there was a moment where we had something that that did feel different and that there was sort of that the generation was kind of fighting back against sort of the big culture.

Shira Chess: 56:56

And then, you know, the Internet happened and then it went, you know, and now we're here.

AP Strange: 57:04

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that kind of gets back to bring us back to my initial question which was the promise of the world wide web when it started going into everyone's home is you know, I was young and I guess we're about the same age, but it's like my father worked for the digital corporation and we had their computer at home before a lot of other people did. And I was struck by the idea that this is something that we can now communicate with people overseas and all over the place. Sure.

AP Strange: 57:44

Immediately, and it seemed like the promise of that era was that, like you said, there weren't the corporate barriers and I guess, you know, powers that be sought to it by this point today.

Shira Chess: 57:58

Well, that's not case. Right. Well, and everyone that you communicated with across Stees and on the other side of the world, you knew were actual humans. I mean, they may not be the humans that they said they were, but there was a general understanding that you were talking to humans. You know?

Shira Chess: 58:15

I I mean, I I'm a college professor, and I I had a moment when I was teaching a class full of freshmen recently where I realized that they've never known a culture. They've never or they've never known an Internet rather where they could assume that all of the people were real.

AP Strange: 58:36

Yeah. Yeah.

Shira Chess: 58:38

I mean, that's pretty wild when you think about that.

AP Strange: 58:42

Right. I mean, we knew that there probably wasn't really a prince in Nigeria that was trying to give us

Shira Chess: 58:49

Right.

AP Strange: 58:50

But some real person had to write that email.

Shira Chess: 58:53

Sure. Sure.

AP Strange: 58:54

But yeah. No.

Shira Chess: 58:55

I mean, but there was also, like, the midpoint. Right? Like, the the the, you

AP Strange: 58:58

know Yeah. That was that was later. But

Shira Chess: 59:00

Those schemes, that was like the '20, you know, the early twenty tens. Like, you know, back back in, you know, the age of BBSs and the early, you know, in Usenet and and sort of like the the early message boards, you always knew you were talking to a person. It wasn't there was no question that you were talking to a person. You didn't know who that person was, but you you knew that there was, you know, a human on the other side. And that was a really powerful feeling, right, to know that the world had gotten that much smaller.

AP Strange: 59:31

Yeah, yeah. And I feel like there's always these shifts with media and forms of technology where it becomes more DIY and it becomes divorced from having to appease some kind of corporate overlord. But nowadays we've more or less given away to algorithms and social media ways of getting anything that we create out there regardless of what it is, right? Like if your business isn't online, it doesn't exist as far as people are concerned.

Shira Chess: 01:00:10

Yeah, it's true.

AP Strange: 01:00:12

Yeah. Well, don't want to be a bummer. I keep coming back to being a bummer because I feel like the book wasn't a bummer. But

Shira Chess: 01:00:22

I'm glad to hear that.

AP Strange: 01:00:25

That was a lot of very interesting stuff. Well, when you're talking about the memes, this is something that was interesting to me was the origin of the Skeletor meme because I had no idea that that had such a storied history.

Shira Chess: 01:00:38

Yeah. I didn't either. That was that was really cool finding that out. That was, Autumn Fox, who used to run the discordian.com. They were they were the ones who told me about that.

Shira Chess: 01:00:53

It was amazing. The it it was essentially Pantheon. They were there was a lot of infighting going on, and they they created a they it was a Skeletor affirmations ritual. And they were using Skeletor because he always just looked so sad in the images. And he they were like, you know, this this is sort of using using that meme and using the general idea to kind of spread outward, you know, this positive energy to try and like lift up the community better.

Shira Chess: 01:01:32

And the you know, I and so like part of why I told that story was and this wasn't the earliest example, but it was I thought it was a really sweet example because of course then of course that Skeletor meme ended up happening outside of, you know, the Discordian, you know, like, all like, it just it became a regular meme. Right? It just alongside all the other memes. Right? And and it makes you kind of wonder how many you know, where do our memes come from?

Shira Chess: 01:02:02

And, like, how, you know, what kind of intentions get put into meme images, the macros that that we see. Right? We we don't know all of the stories and we don't know the origins. And those origins are are interesting and messy. But part of where why I told that story was that so I was looking at the magic meme war of twenty sixteen that supposedly, you know, the meme magicians online said that they used to, elect Trump as president.

Shira Chess: 01:02:33

And most of the accounts told by them and also, a couple of academics were attributing the dawn of meme magic to 2014, I believe, the Ebola Chan meme. And I talked to magicians who were like, no. We were using memes long before that. Right? Like, that's not right?

Shira Chess: 01:03:00

Like and well and one of the best ones was the DKM used linking sigil. And the linking sigil was something that was used in the I think it was the early 2000s. I am not remembering offhand what the year was, but the you know, either late nineties or early 2000s. And so it was the sigil to kind of like link together different communities. It was putting in all kinds of things.

Shira Chess: 01:03:25

That's in Unicode. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Like, we have all of these, like, memes that are out there, you know, people using you know, meme of the hand of Eris, right, as in in like, you know, emoticon style, right, as page dividers.

Shira Chess: 01:03:49

All of these things out there, they have meaning, and they were people expressing different kinds of belief systems into their digital objects. And that's not to say that they worked or didn't work, but it's certainly part of the wallpaper now.

AP Strange: 01:04:05

Yeah, absolutely.

Shira Chess: 01:04:06

And the thing about the wallpaper is you stop noticing it after a while.

AP Strange: 01:04:10

Yeah. Yeah. And then one day you look at it and say, well, why is that like well, who chose that?

Shira Chess: 01:04:17

Right.

AP Strange: 01:04:17

Where did that come from? Right? Yeah and I think that's kind of something that you come back to throughout the book in regards to kind of the objectivity of it is that it really doesn't matter whether the magic works or the magic is real or what people truly believe when they're doing this stuff. It's the fact that it is there, it's baked in, it's part of the Internet and it's integral to the Internet's existence, right? Whether or not it's truly magical, right?

Shira Chess: 01:04:54

Right.

AP Strange: 01:04:55

Yeah, I think that's a really cool thing. Then while we're talking about that, maybe think of, well two things. Two of the bigger messaging apps used out there nowadays are like Discord and Slack. And it always kind of struck me that one of them seems to have an association with Discordians, the Discord, and Slack

Shira Chess: 01:05:22

seems to

AP Strange: 01:05:22

be a reference to subgenius. You know?

Shira Chess: 01:05:25

Yeah. I hadn't thought that's a really good point. I hadn't thought about that with Slack. The Discord thing, I've, like, thought about, and I was like, man, I wish I knew.

AP Strange: 01:05:35

Yeah. Who knows? Because that's, I think, seems like a weird way to describe an app that you use to communicate with people while you're playing video games or whatever, you know? Agreed. And the other thing I was thinking about is like sometimes these things are really just jokes that meaning gets lost.

AP Strange: 01:05:55

Like everybody calls emails they don't want spam still nowadays, and it's really just because early people on the Internet were Monty Python fans.

Shira Chess: 01:06:04

Right. Right. No. I mean, like, the you know, all of these linguistic moments matter.

AP Strange: 01:06:14

Yeah. I think so. Because, I mean, I I the when when you're talking about, like, platonic platonic forms or magical concepts and the power and names and things like that, then yeah absolutely the language we choose matters and the language more often than not in the internet and the tech sphere is at least a cult adjacent, right?

Shira Chess: 01:06:40

Right.

AP Strange: 01:06:41

I think, you know, a lot of it is summed up by the header for your last chapter in this, which is nothing is true, everything is permitted, which of course is near and dear to me as a Discordian, that but kind of of gets to some of your conclusions on this. But I think it also really does kind of sum up the world in which we live where everybody is experiencing a kind of different reality.

Shira Chess: 01:07:09

Yeah. So it so the mythology, of course, is that supposedly Hasani Saba said that on his deathbed, and then you know, Nietzsche took the phrase. It it it likely was not that there there's a lot of mythology in there, but so I, you know, I'm glossing over a lot. And then it kind of moved about through the twentieth century, and it was so deeply embraced by people in esoteric and counterculture communities by the late twentieth century, largely, I think, because of Burrows and Gysen. Right.

Shira Chess: 01:07:45

Burrows and Gysen loved the phrase and the he Burrows Burrows apparently once told Genesis Pureage that reality is not all it's cracked up to be. Right? Like, he was he was so deeply invested in this idea. And so the, you know so then it kind of like moved through, you know, it moved obviously through the Illuminatus trilogy. It it was it was just used constantly.

Shira Chess: 01:08:20

And it was almost like a an understood code phrase that very much went along again with this idea of like just rank consensus reality, right? Like that reality is flimsy. So, you know, we can sort of do we we we can make of it what we wish. Right? That was more or less the way that it was being interpreted.

Shira Chess: 01:08:41

I'm not necessarily saying that that is what it was intended to mean in every iteration, but that was certainly sort of the broad interpretation of how it was being deployed. And then, you know, by 2007, Assassin's Creed comes out. And, like, all of the early references, like, if, you know, in the early two thousands or in the nineties, any reference to that phrase would have been referencing counterculture and esoteric folk. And then by 2007, of course, it gets used as sort of the tagline for Assassin's Creed, that changes everything. Right?

Shira Chess: 01:09:14

All of a sudden, it becomes a like, if you do a search today, you will not find references that the only references you will find are for Assassin's Creed or maybe a few for Hassani Sabah. Is it necessarily does that mean, you know, was something taken from, you know, the folks that were, you know, the cast magicians that were into it? No. I mean, like, you know, there was it was memetic, right? Like the information moved online.

Shira Chess: 01:09:50

But it's sort of eerie that that is essentially what the Internet has become. Right? That it was again, it sort of it started to feel like the wallpaper at a certain point, I think, that that phrase got used over and over again by a lot of people who were very invested in the Internet. And then it became put in a game, and now that phrase is everywhere. And it's also definitional to how we are seeing reality online.

AP Strange: 01:10:20

Yeah. Yeah. And I when it comes to video games too, also makes me a little uneasy because I'm again, I'm not a video game guy, so I'm not really sure what Assassin's Creed is like. But, you know, it makes me think of of people that signed up for for Ice memberships in the past year or two, and we're talking about how it's like Call of Duty, and they're treating it like it's a video game. You know?

AP Strange: 01:10:50

Like

Shira Chess: 01:10:51

Yeah. I I mean, like, Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty are definitely, like, not. You know? Like, that that's a lot of gamers right now are like but but certainly, I think gaming out this idea of nothing is true, everything is permitted is sort of the existence that we're living, and that is the

AP Strange: 01:11:09

point. Yeah. Yeah. So you're saying the two games are not similar or are similar?

Shira Chess: 01:11:16

Not. A very very different vibe.

AP Strange: 01:11:21

Okay. Well, I I I I'm just saying, like, that we can see some real world ramifications as far as Call of Duty goes with with that one example. That's

Shira Chess: 01:11:32

Yeah.

AP Strange: 01:11:33

Patently disturbing. Right? But yeah. Yeah. Well, where do you where do you see it all going from here?

AP Strange: 01:11:44

Do you see a path forward with this?

Shira Chess: 01:11:47

I mean, you did you didn't wanna end this on a depressing note. Oh my gosh. I'm trying to avoid that. I'm hoping

AP Strange: 01:11:53

that yes. I'm I'm

Shira Chess: 01:11:54

hoping Yeah. No. I mean, I don't know. Like, I don't know. We're all living in our little anxiety boxes now.

Shira Chess: 01:12:03

And hopefully hopefully, we will find the the the, like, the will magic to change things. Right? To collectively come together and change material reality. Because I do still think that the promise of what people were looking at at the dawn of the Internet and believing they could do, I think it's still there. It's just, you know, a lot of layers deep.

AP Strange: 01:12:40

Yeah. Well, I'll try to be positive on that end too and back that up because I think a lot of magic and manifestation is not so much about countering what's happening right now but envisioning a better future and seeing how the systems that are designed to keep us apart are really kind of a house of cards that we can knock down if we want to. Right? I

Shira Chess: 01:13:12

like that.

AP Strange: 01:13:13

Yeah. These structures are not set in stone. In fact, they're not made of anything except ones and zeros. So we can we can absolutely reshape it. It's a matter of Yeah.

AP Strange: 01:13:27

Figuring out

Shira Chess: 01:13:29

I I I like that, and I wanna believe that. So I'm with you.

AP Strange: 01:13:33

Alright. Perfect. So if, where can people find your book? I mean, I know where they are.

Shira Chess: 01:13:42

At all places one can find a book. It is available online. I am hesitant to recommend, you know, Bezos. So I'll say that if you go to MIT Press' website, all of the different links are there, and you can easily find it from there. The and also, I have a substack.

AP Strange: 01:14:09

Right. Yeah. I was gonna get to that too. That Okay. Your preferred social media for your writings and everything is Substack.

AP Strange: 01:14:17

Mhmm. Substack's easily searchable. So I mean, you don't really need the You're Shira Chess on

Shira Chess: 01:14:25

I'm Shira Chess, and my Substack is Unseen Internet.

AP Strange: 01:14:30

Okay. Wonderful. And you got a project you're working on now with Are You Serious? Do you have any kind of a deadline with that or an idea where that might be published?

Shira Chess: 01:14:43

That will likely be out in 2027.

AP Strange: 01:14:47

Okay.

Shira Chess: 01:14:48

Cool. It is it is in a good place right now, is what I'll say. And, Ken and I have a lot of fun writing that book, and it is, it is a wild ride of a book.

AP Strange: 01:15:01

Well, I look forward to it. It does sound like a like a like a fun a fun read. So, well, you know, this has all been very fascinating. I will recommend listeners get a copy of this book because I think people will find it every bit as fascinating as I did. And you so much for coming on the show.

Shira Chess: 01:15:23

Thank you so much for having me. This was great. This was a lot of fun.