Interview: Arturo Tafoya
Cicada 3301, Disinformation, Psychological Operations, ARGs, Hyperstition, QAnon, Sense Making...
Maybe you’ve heard of Cicada 3301. If not its a mysterious and highly secretive organization that emerged in 2012 and over several years posted on various internet forums and websites, puzzled that induced steganography, cryptography and other forms of esoteric knowledge. Some believed it to be a recruitment tool for highly skilled linguists, computer programmers, cryto-graphers.
The puzzles led participants on a months-long scavenger hunt around the world, with clues hidden in various locations such as books, music, and artwork. Those who successfully completed the puzzles were believed to have been contacted by Cicada 3301 and offered the opportunity to join the organization, although the true nature and purpose of the group remain unknown.
Cicada 3301 has been the subject of much speculation and investigation over the years, with some suggesting it may be a government agency, a private organization, or even an elaborate prank or social experiment. However, the true identity and intentions of Cicada 3301 remain shrouded in mystery.
I however had the pleasure of speaking with artist and researcher Arturo Tafoya who was recruited to create art assets for Cicada 3301 and was engaged actively with a group that ultimately was likely a splinter faction of Cicada 3301 in 2017.
We spoke in detail about his experience, the current state of Cicada, disinformation, psychological operations, hyperstition , QAnon, other internet lore and ultimately sense making.
Arturo is currently working on a book and a documentary. His art was used in a VICE and HBO documentary on QAnon and I thought this was a good discussion and introduction to a complex information world. Hopefully you can take his advise to remain emotionally disconnected in your own sense making.
Researcher and Artist Arturo Tafoya
He archives videos ConspiracyDistillery.com or on Youtube
All artwork on post by Arturo Tafoya
AI Transcription
Leafbox
How do you describe yourself usually Arturo?
Arturo:
Well, I'm from Mexico. I'm from Baja, really close to the border, so I grew up speaking English. I'm an industrial engineer, but I've never really exercised my career. I was a game developer. I had my own MMORPG where I was in admin for almost a year. Then I had a really cool job on making video games and Game Loft. Then got kicked out, breaked up with my girlfriend where I was living, and then basically came back to my house and I was kind of like in a limbo state. It's too much of a limbo that I went back to school to study medicine and it's just trying to figure out what to do with myself. I always had, art for me has always been a hobby and I happened to stumble upon this games on online, but they seemed pretty legit and connected to real events.
So I got, that piqued my attention and also piqued my attention that they had this esoteric tendency. And I've always thrived on making those kind of cryptic looking, mysterious, ominous sort of art that you could leave it to interpretation. But people go into this deep thinking, it's a very interesting phenomenon. And since I wasn't, I didn't even stop myself able to get to the point that I was going to solve cicada and meet the people. So I went to another puzzle and I realized that among the rules on a r g exists, one this is more important, is that there are no rules. So I thought to myself, well, I am just going to jump directly. There are no rules. That means that I can get to the finish line however I can. And I started making art for free and started publishing it on the Discord and promoting that specific puzzle that wasn't alleged. Cicada 3301.
Leafbox:
For some people who aren't familiar with Cicada or ARGs, how would you quickly describe Cicada?
Arturo:
Okay. Cicada W was a series of cryptographic puzzles that were posted on four chan. It all started with an image, but it was basically sort of like a scavenger unicorn. But the motif or what they claimed to be looking for was to recruit people that were really good in solving cryptographic puzzles and allegedly intelligent individuals. And I say allegedly because to go and find them unfortunate, it's quite a stretch.
Leafbox:
So what first drew you to Cicada? You said you had a background in video game design. What attracted you to this?
Arturo:
When I worked in Gameloft, it was a bunch of, I was a programmer, so Fortune Chan was part, I was in that job. I met Fortune before even Saturday was a thing before Cat memes was a thing. It started in four chan as every Saturday people posted things about cats and became Catter it. I come from the wave starts of four chan. So that was some, that was the gaming culture, the gaming culture, the internet culture that I was already really soaked into. I also had the MMORPG. So I really had this different kind of view of there's somebody always running the game and if the game is, it grows out of proportions. They're always looking for people to help. And I noticed that CIA had art, but not that it could be incredibly improved. And it had excellent themes and it was just easy to generate content for it.
And I started making images and so on. And so that I got interested in Takeda because it was point in my life where kind of figuring out what, I didn't have a clear path of that sense of lack of purpose or that you were doing something relevant and Takeda seemed like a challenge and they were really trying to do something good. It looked legit put out my art enough that I eventually got noticed and through word of mouth I got, first of all, I became part of the staff of that first A r G, which by the way is augmented reality games, taking elements of fantasy or game into reality and mixing and them that, that's basically a very rough sketch, what a r g is. Other people call it LARP, which is a live action roleplaying game, but I don't think Cicada goes into that definition.
Leafbox:
So they recruited you through, was this through the puzzle itself? Because sometimes people solve puzzles and the cryptographic puzzles, or how did they recruit you or how did they contact you through Discord.
Arturo:
Or be because of my art. They liked it and somebody contacted somebody that eventually ended up me being introduced to the person that was, let's say, in control of Cicada during that era.
Leafbox:
And just to go back, how did you know that person was actually in control of Cicada when they claimed to be an anonymous organization?
Arturo:
Well, first of all, they really did this, I would call it school play in front of me where they dazzled me. The person that was running the current Cicada is a close friend, was a really famous Hollywood composer named Michael Levine. And he introduced me to, and that was real, and that was like, whoa, wait, if this guy is involved, then there's something to it. So many things didn't checked out since the beginning with that group because it ended up being just a hijacked version of Cicada didn't have the P g P code, but at the end it did offer that kick, right? That you're doing something that is bigger than you, that is going to reach millions of people. And the whole idea back then when I participated in 20 17, 20 18 was we already had notions of waking people up of Follow the White Rabbit Alice down the rabbit hole.
Leafbox:
Just to go back a step just to imagine you're talking to someone who knows nothing. Did you ever meet some of the other participants who were, I know sometimes they had real events where they would give coordinates and geolocation and they would meet in person, or did you ever meet any of the other, I guess, players of Cicada or just this is all through the internet.
Arturo:
I actually got to meet in person. The person running the puzzle ended up staying at my house for two weeks because allegedly, I invited him over because allegedly he had pneumonia and didn't have any place to go. So I told him, well, why don't you stay here? And that was when the mask came off and I realized that, well, this guy is dangerous and definitely not what he pretends to be.
Leafbox:
So going back a step before the other players who are kind of trying to solve the puzzle, isn't there a final puzzle that no one's been able to solve The Ruins puzzle?
Arturo:
Oh yeah. Lever Primus.
Leafbox:
Yeah. Could you tell me a little bit about that or how that came about or what the purpose of that? Is
Arturo:
It a weird, I have my personal opinion. It's considered canonical within the Cicada story storyline. To me, once you read what has been decoded, it has elements of a cult. It's called the Im it it diverts completely to more esoteric to more new age sort of mentality, which is unnerving because that's not how the original Cicada started, but nevertheless, it is, it's alluring. It wraps your attention, the mystique and more because they did a lot of work to create this fog of mystique and myth around it that it actually became something that had some sort of, that could be web used as a weapon eventually.
Leafbox:
My question, do you think the original people who started the first posting such sophisticated puzzles are the same people who continued it on later as it went along? Or no different people?
Arturo:
No, just completely, I don't think so because of evidence that I've seen of this people, of the current people that have it trying to influence the original puzzle or try to inject their own puzzles, trying to divert the solvers to their things. And then at one point, them trying to sell the cicada concept to Sony, to a m c, to different companies to make a movie. And I don't know if, but recently, maybe two years ago a movie did came out of Cicada, which I don't recommend anyone to watch it.
Leafbox:
Who were the original founders then? Was there government agents? Were they actually trying to recruit people or were just video game type people, LARPing, and what kind of people were, I'm curious to see the difference.
Arturo:
I have a different take because during the time when Cicada came out, this was 2012 Occupy, wall Street had just happened. The whole Anonymous height was still kind of like on, but uncertain. And the focus of Cicada as in testimonies of people that allegedly made it to the end have told us is that what they wanted was to create tools for whistleblowers to be able to expose government corruption or without any problem. That's called the Cakes program. This is all according to Marcus Wagner and that, so that's something that disturbs me, that it has me, puts me unease because it, it's a consti consistent theme of either supporting whistleblowers, wiki likis, Julian Assange, anything related to that.
Leafbox:
So sere the first founders kind of libertarian type, anonymous type hacker people who were kind of symbolic to the Occupy Wall Street whistle blowing. That's what you're saying, just to summarize,
Arturo:
That's who, yeah, they reflect those ideologies.
Leafbox:
And then as the game developed, you're saying that other people hijacked some of the puzzles to try to divert those players into a different,
Arturo:
One clear case of deception that was done on the players that even reached the news was a fake B B C website that came out in 2015 that talked about Cicada and supposedly something that BBC was going to do something with Cicada. It also talked about Charlie Hebdo and has some weird stuff there, but it looked exactly like the BBC website. It had the r l was BBC dot, it was a very good, and it was just one of many attempts by the same group of let's say, yeah, same group of people that were doing this infiltration on social movements, because you see them also in Occupy. And another movement was, which was Standing Rock it. It's a group of people that have learned to Weaponize Anonymous. An example, if you look in YouTube for the anonymous official channel, it's going to be filled with propaganda. It has almost 3 million subscribers, but it was, it's owned by Gaia tv, which is a new age television network, big propagators of conspiracy theories. Theories. This just one example is one of the many false path that one could follow. Oh, it's the anonymous official channel, but you start seeing David Wilcock and everything suddenly.
Leafbox:
So a lot of these ARGs maybe start off as not altruistic purposes of non-commercial. And then you're saying that a lot of them get kind of forked by commercial interests, including this guy, anonymous, anonymous hackers be angry and try to hack back against some of these people, or did
Arturo:
They? That's what I thought. That's what thought. Also, I went to the guy, I've been going with every guy that has come out as anonymous official and have told them this information and given them the evidence, and they have just no, they, I would think that this, I thought the same thing, but if you recall, ano Anonymous really got infiltrated, decimated and in 20 13, 20 12 by Sabu. But that's a member of the collective, but that's completely different story. But I would say that why would anyone would trust Anonymous now, right? Because it, it's documented that not only infiltrations, but also that how it has been weaponized. I mean, anyone can make a template.
Leafbox:
So Arturo, how this goes kind of into the larger question of psychological operations and disinformation and who is infiltrating these groups? Government agencies, also commercial interests. You're seeing it all, I guess.
Arturo:
Well, I would say that foreign influence like Israeli, Russian, Chinese, but done by n normally by national Nationals. Nationals, most of them have this I idea. Most of them know exactly what they are doing. They have read the literature. If you want to go back to the original A r G Makers, the original ones that start doing those things, that would be wooing, an Italian collected prankster that actually wrote a book named the seed has been planted over and over. The way that they use that they use movie references, the way that they use certain things like tropes about Disney, the
Leafbox:
People creating and working on these, I guess they have experience in kind ofs storytelling and sense story making. Yes. Are they working organically? How do they write the script? How are they approaching the larger rule making of this process?
Arturo:
That's a story on its own. I mean, I want to give you an honest answer, but not a too complicated one is that there's an institution and there are people with a lot of money that have been studying how to create, they call it a agents of conscious evolution or gorilla gurus that if you read their creed, it's basically to create conspiracy theories for the betterment of humanity. If you Gwen in this sort of medium, you know, will encounter accelerationism, things like active one, some could call it chaos, magic, other, we call it hyper station making, trying to deduce the future through wildcards. That's what futurists do, but most importantly, how to be agents of change, how them to be influencers. Why, if you study the initial how QAnon, the first real one, not the ones that mainstream media tell you about, group described Tracy beings before that.
There were people like David Wilcock, channels like Victoria Libertas channels that people like Robert, David Steele, Benjamin Fulford, and there are people that have been doing this for decades, I mean at least for a decade. And so they already had a network to basically when, oh, let's all start, we are all going to start talking about this thing. That they already had the structure to do that because they were all repeating the guara thing in 2012. They were all retweeting the, or not retweeting, but sharing among them. And the thing about the end of the world, and it is because it is educated to the, they're educated to not only be in this network, but everything that one channel post all the other channels pulls normally through R S S R S S feeds. And so they're able to create this bubble, this virtual virtual bubble that if you get inside wherever you're going to is the classic funnel that many people were complaining that YouTube was making, that the autoplay keeps sending you more into the rabbit hole and more and more and more and more. So you're talking about people that have lots of experience because they, they've been promising the end of the world since 20 2011 or something, and they been able to keep the griffon going
Leafbox:
Second and the purpose for these people, what is the concept of hypers and chaos magic? Could you maybe summarize those
Arturo:
Of chaos, magic, and let's start with Hypers station. Hypers station is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's the opposite of a superstition that it's simply just a belief hyper station. You have to see it as something that by itself came to be. It's really a complex, let's call it like space travel. How many years, thousands of years humans have been thinking about going out of space, visiting the moon. It was something that you could say that we made it a reality ano, another example is like you see a ladder and you think about beneath it because it could bring you bad luck or not, and you don't care about, you say nah, and you crossed the ladder, but because you were thinking about the possibility of being cursed by doing that action, actually something does happen to you, and that doesn't mean that the ladder is cursed, but that you made the curse real won.
Yeah. You play your part in turning myth, A superstition into reality is even in the things that, in example, Qanon has said, and this Alex Jones said it, and I think that many people missed it when he called out Qanon Aon on one of his shows is that he said when he talked to the generals back then when Qanon was legit, was that they were putting out the things that they would want or that they wish that would come to be. It's the same kind of, I would see it as the same kind of ideology, is that you wish it so hard that it comes true. Just mind over matter. Just pray that your washer start working or praise. So there's good weather. There's still a lot of people that lean in that
Leafbox:
And Arturo going back a step. So
Arturo:
Yeah.
Leafbox:
Going back to the fork and cicada, you said that the, is Cicada still active today? Has it been disbanded? What is the current status of that
Arturo:
A r g? It's, it's still active and it's dangerous and yeah, you can still find them the, they're still very active. And I can remember maybe three months ago an artist rapper named ACON came out validating them, saying like, Hey, you guys want to find some secret template, treasure my brother, my homies over here cicada. They have some cool treasure hitting maybe behind me. And he was like, in this Josh traveling to the island, island of Malta, which allegedly there was something hitting there, but now they're combining crypto and the, it's basically just a bunch of people from really another era by, but I don't mean this in a bad way, but just people almost reaching 70 years old, lost in contact and that have without a doubt, a political agenda. And because I was there and then because I interacted with them enough, look for different foreign interests. Sometimes it's a Chinese, sometimes it's Russia. But they
Leafbox:
Are these financial interests or what are these dangerous interests? Are they trying to grift the people who follow the puzzles or what is the
Arturo:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just by the crypto,
Leafbox:
The current iteration of cicadas is promoting certain cryptocurrencies and the people buy into those type of Paus.
Arturo:
Okay, got it. Yeah, they already did a pump. Pump and dump how they call it.
Leafbox:
And then when did you stop getting involved with Cicada? Did you leave the group or
Arturo:
Once, yeah.
Leafbox:
What's the history of that?
Arturo:
Well, after I had to kick the leader out of cicada, out of my house, because he wouldn't leave, there was a buffering period, but I would say that probably August, 2018 where there was a moment that when I kicked him out, the magic has had already disappeared. So during that time that happened in the beginnings of June to August, it was a time for me to prepare basically to the, because I know I knew back then that it was just a matter of time until he went. This person, the leader of Cicada who name is Thomas Scherer, he has appeared many documentaries. He doesn't hide it. He's an public figure, be ready for what was coming from him.
Leafbox:
Going back as Arturo, do you believe that you were indoctrinated into a cult or is a type of cult or did you leave, I'm not using that in a bad word, or a new age movement or what is echo chamber of that game?
Arturo:
Well, the thing is that I think that they thought I, since I went into Cicada, I was an atheist. So even when they were doing things like the Spirit of Destiny supposed the spirit that pierced the side of Christ, for me that was super weird because it was like, that's fictional and what does the Relic even does it, many things didn't checked out, but again, there were this validators famous people. I could see them to have the capacity of making things trend in the cult like form. I would say that, yeah, they would, the typical love showers where they praise you a lot and if you don't follow through with what you're expected to do, you would get the ice treatment. Nobody talks to you. And that's what they tried to do with me when I started to call out. What was happening is that they first tried to get me to yield to lay low for three months, then I could come back and be cicada again. Nothing happened. And of course that was out of the question.
Leafbox:
Are there other members of Cicada who have left and you've kind of touched base with now or,
Arturo:
Yeah, actually everybody that was with me during that time left in 2017, there was this famous case of this young man that got disappeared in Brazil, allegedly either was abducted by aliens or who knows, but he left his room with ridden with cryptic stuff and all that. Well, he was a member of Cicada.
Leafbox:
This is the case of Bruno Borque, right? Yes,
Arturo:
Exactly.
Leafbox:
So you knew Bruno Borges before when he was in Cicada or I didn't know that. Yeah,
Arturo:
I would consider him a friend. We talked several times on Skype, even if he only spoke Portuguese, and I was actually going to help him out on his project that he had come up with until, which was also a kind of enlightenment game where the final goal was to reach enlightenment and all that. But when I read the plans, when I read the plans that he had to for the game and that included not masturbating for a week, it, it's weird, and I told him, no, this is too weird. This is too culty. No things. Again, the
Leafbox:
Irony of that is isn't there that NOFA movement that's quite online with the, what is it, the raw egg nationalist or I forget the guy's name, there's a lot of right wing kind of male culture that's into male vitality.
Arturo:
Yes.
Leafbox:
Do most of the members who are attracted to, don't take this in the wrong way, Arturo, but would you consider people on the spectrum high IQ people? What kind of people are attracted to these? I mean, these puzzles are very challenging, the original cryptographic puzzle, so who were the people attracted to this kind of people?
Arturo:
Well, yeah, it definitely pulled in lots of smart people and the smart people were smart enough to leave, but also attracted a lot of people that lacked self importance or had this necessity of being validated as in, look, I was accepted into the super secret society, and so that means that I'm smarter than you. Well, I saw that many times that it was, and also a lot of crazy people, lots of
Leafbox:
Arturo. Going back to the beginning of our conversation, it seems like when you first got attracted to this, you were said, looking for direction and looking for purpose in your life, did Cicada provide that for you? Is that part of the reason you got deeper and deeper into the world and movement?
Arturo:
Well, in my case, it's a little bit funny because I continue and it has provided me to both the biggest ave. I mean, have the best story I can think of that I've heard from that has come out of this cesspool and I've actually been able to change, move the needle, like the global need in my case, in my particular case, and it is because have been for almost five years understanding what happened to me then after understanding, finding, studying it, studying it, and then finding the correct way to express or to just being able to articulate something so complicated that happened. We can jump around, but it's a really clear timeline that it was great when it did offer me that feeling when there's a video called Deprogramming, and that was the kickoff of the 2018 alleged cicada puzzle, and a lot of that video went viral and it was the one that made it. And of course there was no trace or no sign of that I did it, but I was in all the discord chats of cicada and I had the opportunity of seeing people just going, dissecting my video frame by frame, getting all hyped up on how it was, and I got that feeling, that kick that I delivered.
Leafbox:
Moving to the present day. What is, you described yourself as a quote digital activist. What is your activism about now? Are you trying to create new ARGs or warn people against them or what's your kind of focus
Arturo:
On now? Well, I don't think that AGS and within the themselves are bad. It's just thing that people would use it for bad things. But throughout the connections that I met by being inside of KS 3 21, I was able to map out the weakest link and reach an understanding of what was going on, who were how they operate. And I've been trying, I help people who are researching, I am writing a book. I'm going to be in a documentary coming in 2024. I can't say the name of it or more details other than that because of an N D A basically goes not totally, but it, it's very different to what it is out in the mainstream media and it's going to be a waiting game until then.
Leafbox:
Going back to the point that you said you helped, I think I saw some work you did with Professor Dilly. Could you go into some of your work on helping, I mean, the concept of disinformation and sense making is so large. What is your purpose there or how do you help, what can we learn for people who aren't in cada? I mean with Covid, I think everyone saw some of the psychological operations that were going on and the complexity of understanding reality. That's what I'm interested in Cicada. It seems like there's that edge. So what's some of your work there with Professor Dilly? How are you helping, I think Professor Dilly focuses on Qanon and disinformation. How are you helping her or what's your role there or what's she working on or how are you helping her there?
Arturo:
Okay, well, in that case, she was doing an investigation in Qanon on and bumped into a channel that I had back then where I was putting out my research, my information, trying to get the message out. She saw my message and noticed that what I was saying kind of checked out with what her data was showing. And at the end, my research helped just going directly or just pointing a north in the right direction. And I got a mention on the paper, which I, I'm very thankful. I also help the, which hold my comment, but I was also involved in the Vice documentary in QAnon on the H B O documentary on qan in the fifth episode. It also chose my art in the Financial Times and TED Talk, and currently right now I'm helping in another TED Talk
Leafbox:
Going to, let's just jump to QAnon on for a second. You've mentioned it briefly. What's the connection between Cicada and QAnon? Is there any, or are they just parallel?
Arturo:
Well, I wouldn't say between Q and Cicada, you're talking about two abstractions, right? And I would say that they don't have anything to do with each other, but I can tell you that people that were or are currently running the iteration of Cicada without a doubt, are involved in disinformation campaigns. I can, by the evidence that I've been able to collect, I can at least be sure that the entity called F B I Anon, which preceded Qanon on by almost a year, which was basically the same concept did came from this person, Thomas, who was the same person who came to my house and I had to kick out was the same person who was one of the main spreaders of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory who got hired by this money man from Texas called Ed Gutowski, who involved himself in this murder case, trying to really just basically prove that Russia didn't have anything to do with the Trump administration. That is right. At one point, Cicada did have a direct line to the White House through Ed Gutowski. That's why Ed, this iteration of Cicada was able to go sort of viral because it was putting out information that did came from, in some cases, either for the White House, Brad Gutowski, or through other sources, either General Flynn who was in chat rooms with the same person that I'm talking to that I've been talking Thomas,
Leafbox:
Trying to, going back to, so they're trying to do what information warfare or trying to manipulate the online sense making world for their political or financial purposes, or they just pranksters or what's their purpose in doing this? I mean, Qanon just has its own life and hard to understand.
Arturo:
Well, and in the case of individually, maybe each one has its own interpretation of what they are doing at, I thought that I was helping humanity, that I was doing something good, that I was inspiring people, but my things were used to create propaganda, my means, my imagery, the videos, when I saw them with a Q overlap, it made my blood boil because I've never been okay with it's inception, and it's since it, it's an inception. I asked within Cicada like, Hey, is Thomas Q? I asked another member, another member, because I could see it, see it that they were involved at. But I was recruited in October, 2017, so just when it was happening, I was just a new guy and they didn't trust me that much. So the only answer I got was like, I can't tell you in a little giggle. And I just thought to myself, then they are, but they're later going to tell me or something, but I would never imagine that it would escalate in the way that it did or I did. Since I was in Cicada, I tried to do what I could to go against it. Even using the name of Cicada as in a way to, Hey, we are cicada and we are saying that Q is Bs, you know, should respect us. We have more time in this. But that didn't help much.
But in the long term, after a lot of effort, I had no idea what I was doing there. When it's easy to say, oh yeah, we're fighting the siop, or you, you're dealing with the trolls. This are a grade level troll. Professor Deley and myself got attacked directly by the media arm of Russia because of the paper that she released, which is, I would say should be concerning for Americans, is that her paper was first admitted in to be published in Frontiers, and it was all green lighted. It was just basically, well, the next day it was peer reviewed, accepted just some minor things that was going to be changed, Russia and the media arm of Russia, along with the weekly leaks using Mark support people or the people who are behind most of the cherry funds behind Julian Assange and Wiki Leaks sent a parade of emails accusing me of being a troll, accusing, saying that I was the main source of all the information and that I've been harassing them for some time. And then after that, they, and they were able to make Frontiers take down the paper, Russian influence was able to tamper with a publication by an American professor from M S U because it didn't, it's like a punch on the nose of,
Leafbox:
So who has the biggest kind of online? Is it the Chinese, is it the Russians? Is it the Americans? Who, who's the most capable of this kind of information? Fifth generation,
Arturo:
I would say Israel.
Leafbox:
Oh, Israel, that's interesting.
Arturo:
Yes, because they took it pro. If you look into Cgroup Black Cube, those were the companies that came from Cambridge ci, parent companies or side companies with Cambridge, an Analytica, scl, which are companies that create psychological operations on third world countries, or that simply, there's a lot of documentation regarding even a pitch by Joel SAML, who is the C e o or was the c e o of Cgroup black Cube to the Trump campaign. And it was basically the use of bots, the use of deceptive campaigns. The offer is public for download. It's worth checking it out because it's basically what we saw
Leafbox:
Arturo with the last two, three years of the pandemic. How did your experience with Cicada Qanon on disinformation since making, how did that influence how you saw the covid kind of pandemic development?
Arturo:
Well, with a lot of skepticism, and what was worse was see the same network being activated, the same people that were pushing Qanon on, were the same people doing covid disinformation and is, there's a paper where they map basically the covid disinformation map in 2020, and it's the same actors that we see in the Qanon network. So to me, I'm not going to believe those guys. You start seeing things as in other countries, what they try to do in this case to America, because they can't go straight on against America or it America's a military superpower. So what they rely in is with something called asymmetrical warfare that is basically those little subversive attacks that polarize and eventually implode a country inside out. Many countries have perfect perfected this technique. United States also, that's why it's called the Silent War, right? The fifth generational warfare. It's where the war of idea it, the na narrative warfare. It's another term when facts are not so important, but if you got a good story, man, you got have to take it in.
Leafbox:
I think you can see the same thing happening right now with the war in Ukraine. I mean, there's the Russian narrative and the Western narrative, and then it's very hard to tell which narrative is actually true. And you can see how there's information agents who try to promote either side and then things get erased or people get shadow banned or all kinds of different, whatever the solutions are to make sure that certain voices are promoted and other one's not. What advice do you have to, I guess, norm's been in the, I guess the black hole or disinformation and the challenge of knowing what's real and whatnot? What would you advise to normal people and how they develop their narrative reading skills?
Arturo:
Well, first of all is to, whenever you're seeing something in the news, whenever somebody's telling you something in a video and it's creating an emotional reaction, that should be your first red flag, because that's the angle that they're pitching. They're not aiming at your reason. They're aiming at your emotions. See, why are they showing you this person crying? And it doesn't mean that that necessarily is fake, but it could mean that they're augmenting or they're making much of a bigger deal than it really is. And I mean, they have president, they've done it in the past with the alleged nuclear weapons that Salam Hussein had that really didn't have. But the press had a really big role in hyping that up. And the problem is that we see polarization 100%.
One should really never stop, never be afraid of asking questions, even if they're uncomfortable, even those are the questions worth asking because challenging are good ideas, the ideas that we hold as universal truth, if they should be able to stand up by their own. But if you feel attacked, if you have an adversive emotional reaction to somebody making you a question or making just that, is the monster, the sickness, that's the brain room. We were talking about hypers tension earlier and the soup closed, close that chapter it is, you got to imagine words A, and they, within the C C R U, which is the group that has come up with station acceleration, Nick land, they say words are a virus from our space. And there's a very good example in nature with fungus called the corti SEPs, which is a fungus that normally grows in the jungle.
And what it does is it specializes in a certain kind of things in insect, but especially in an, and what it does is this almost invisible microfilament would or spore would fall into the ant would start spreading through the nerve system of the ant. And the ant will start acting weird up until to the point where the fungus makes the ant go up, find the correct spot with the correct community, humid, moist and shadow and light and the ant. And the final thing that it will do, and this happens to all the insects, will clamp into the aine or whatever they're holding, and they would stay there and from that insect with this gigantic fungus would come out, and then it's a little capsule inside where, and just breaks and against breath to all its spores. And it's in the same way of words, work through us, you know, can't help it.
They transform you and change your perception and your actions. That's why it, it's important to be careful to what we say, and most importantly is to not continue the hate cycle. Because having one side thinking that the other side is the worst thing on the planet, and the other way around is what the people doing this operations want right to you, to distrust your own government, to you, to distrust your neighbor, for you to not respect the police, your democracy, to make you think that you're saving America and all that. I could call it gamification. That would be the correct term.
Leafbox:
I have a question. Since you live on the border between the United States and Mexico, you're kind of in a hybrid state, Spanish, English, Mexico, California. How did that influence your online navigation, do you think? Well, you were able to get out of the cicada or see through it because maybe you speak another language. So the memetic means we're not as strong on you.
Arturo:
A absolute sweet, absolutely. I don't understand the whole race. I understand it, but the racial means don't work too much on Mexicans. It is just not how it is. There are many cultural differences in which one country could be immune or more susceptible. Unfortunately, Mexico is a very religious country, which still believes a lot of that. I've seen it in my city that one time this street light got a burn sunburn, and then it reflected an image that looked like the Virgin Mary, and the next day the street was closed, and all the people were flocking in to see the miracle. So that's something that I've said that I've told in Christian podcasts that I went to, is that you have to realize that your best intentions, your beliefs, the things that you love are the things that you have to be careful of because that's what they're going to use.
They're not going to send themselves as with little horns and with baby parts in a sip lock, know that they're, they're going to present themselves as the thing that you love, as the thing that you care for. That's why you are going to see in the news that you're going to have ex-military talking about a situation, but they're going to be using civilian clothes. Why? Because they want you to relate to them and you know, see the average guy who also has this extra pristiq because he's a veteran, and again, the veteran thing doesn't work on Mexicans because we never went to war. So that is something that I've noticed that is very rooted into the,
Leafbox:
Does the Mexican government engage in psychological operations that you're aware of?
Arturo:
Oh yeah.
Leafbox:
What are some examples?
Arturo:
Oh, the best example that I can think of happened maybe a month ago. Suddenly everybody here on social media, they started saying that there was a curfew, there was a lockdown that the narcos had taken over the city and that anyone who would be on the street would be shot and all that. And there were two burning cars in the entrance and the of to in each entrance of the city.
Leafbox:
This is in en
Arturo:
Yes, yes. And people calling me and telling me, no, there's a curfew, you have to stay inside, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, where? Said that? No, they're just, they're saying social media who sang social media. Long story short, that made angry a lot of people my questions, and at the end it was just, yeah, there were two cars burning. But other than that, it was just hype created on Facebook by, I guess the same narcos, but they managed that day. Everybody, all the stores closed at 6:00 PM did disinformation was so effective that they shut down the city
Leafbox:
And that was organic, or was that actually purposely done by some agent or agent promoted tool? Well,
Arturo:
I saw how they did. It was in Facebook, there are several tools that they could have used if Mexico is one of the biggest buyers of technology to track and keep taps on reporters, on dissidents, on human rights activists, you can see this in, there's this documentary came out on the Pegasus software. Mexico was one of the big most targeted countries because of that software. So yeah, I'm very careful with, I prefer to help the neighbor because they really trying to, something here is you just simply got going to get disappeared.
Leafbox:
One of the, I know time is valuable. So maybe we can finish up talking about what do you think the role of AI deep fakes, is that going to make the problem even worse or better, or what do you imagine the role of, well, I'm personally very concerned about deep fakes and voiceovers and the video creation, but I'm curious what you think.
Arturo:
Yeah, indeed. I've seen chat, I chat, G P T has become my buddy for a coding, and it's scary. I'm glad that that's not one of my main incomes. But still, even in art, it is concerning in any tool revolutionary as it is, like deep fakes or AI assisted anything has the capacity of being misused. But at the same time, and this is something that I believe in and it's because it's a natural reaction if something is created, the antagonist is, there has to be an antagonist. If for every push there's going to be a pull. So they might use, start using AI to crack up our passwords. Well, there are people, really smart people that are coming up with the use of quantum encryption or passwords in example. So it's not that I see that it's all that no, but is that I believe in the capacity of, we always find a way to do things and to no matter what they do, if you just believe in the principles of programming or hacking, that is anything that can be coded can be decoded. We're just going to be fine. Just careful
Leafbox:
And then careful. One of my last questions is, sure. With Elon Musk buying Twitter, do you think information became more difficult to control and narrate? Is he actually an agent of truth and sense making, or do you think, I'm just curious how you see TikTok and Facebook and a lot of them have very deep relations with government and government control in Mexico. I'm sure the Mexican government uses Facebook ads and TikTok ads to manipulate. I'm just curious, where do you see the information more free now or do you actually see it more the disinformation overwhelming?
Arturo:
Oh no, it, it's become ridiculous. I mean, I've always been a person that has been trying to expose what has been going on, and nonetheless, my videos are very well explained that are not ProQ and YouTube has canceled three of my channels, one with almost 40,000 subscribers. Currently. The one that I have has two strikes and one community guideline. Why? Because there's a black box checking it and sometimes how I express my art or very complex concepts, well, it's been very discouraging and it's impossible. Get to someone in YouTube to talk to about, to tell them this. And fortunately on Twitter, I think that I've been able to come out as they whitelisted me, and I can post anything about q and l or about this information, and I don't get bothered, but I, it's Elon Musk believes in Woo, let's call it even Elon Musk has made tweets making references of Cicada 3, 3 0 1 has to be careful with the people that have passed through. Artists are targeted because there are the biggest influencers that you can get an artist on your side, a celebrity, you get legitimized almost in instantaneous. It's the same thing that Scientology does where the artists and the famous people have special treatment. Why? Because they become famous pundits for that cough.
So yeah, I really do worry, but not, it shouldn't take your sleep away the moment that it disrupts your life, the moment that it makes you that doubt of going under the ladder and because you were thinking of the curse of going under the ladder, you know, act an accident actually happened, letting their chaos, magic work as if you leave that these people have some sort of inside knowledge. Many people look for illumination or the transcendence of the self. Just look into where that whole movement comes from, from Russia comes from the GU era, and that's unfortunately, right. I like Russian music. I don't have anything of, again, Russia, but the people who have control the country, people who have power just haven't done, just really want to dumb down and in a constant state of this is happening and this is happening, this is happening constantly over and over just to keep you overwhelmed
Leafbox:
Or maybe to wind down, what's the best way for people to follow your work and what you're working on now? Is that Twitter or work?
Arturo:
Yeah, that would be Twitter, aki dot a at aki or in the conspiracy.com.
Leafbox:
Quick question, is that, are you using your real name or is that a monomer
Arturo:
Assuming, oh, my real name is Arturo. Arturo Tafoya.
Leafbox:
And then you just created that last name, kind of the Russian sounding
Arturo:
Oh yeah, because of I for fun. Got it. For fun. And
Leafbox:
Yeah, when do you think this book of yours will be available or what's the timeframe?
Arturo:
Well, it has to come out before the documentary, but it's still in my Facebook and subs and YouTube channel. I have been putting out lots of really short, it's an excellent story and I got the opportunity that I, I'm really, I'm thankful that the people and the company that are doing the documentary that's going to come out in 2024 is I would say the best in production value and resources. The past year you went to Vienna, it, it's, and it's a completely different narrative that just completely different story than what everybody has listened to on the media and that's, that's something I believe in is that if you really want to change somebody, somebody's opinion or somebody's belief is basically just tell them a better story.
Leafbox:
Got
Arturo:
It. That's the plan.
Leafbox:
Well, Arturo, maybe we can do another one when your book comes and explore that book and hopefully this documentary is successful and I'm looking forward to watching it.
Arturo:
I would be delighted. Of course. And still during the meantime we're still working on, again, this TED Talk. It's going to be in April, which I'm assisting and helping actually, professor Dilly and yeah, again, it's somebody that was inside. It's like somebody that's from the inside had the opportunity to work with academia to learn so much and to really study this and just getting over it, detaching yourself emotionally. And yeah, it's something that I'm sure that not only because of the story but of just like if, for anyone that likes conspiracies, this is a real one, the conspiracy of a conspiracy of conspiracies. And so really I have this certain, not certainty, but confidence of the story of the people that I'm working on, and it's of the evidence collected. So it's going to be interesting to see what's going to be their reaction to the new body of evidence and how are people who have written books based on false information or wrong leads that they had or not are going to react. Because first time I came out to the public, it didn't come out as I expected. You're going to notice when it's going to come out. Anyone who is interested can contact me, and I have no problem with sharing any information, what's on my website, what's on my social media. Anyone can use it, do whatever, what they want with it, and I don't have any issue with it. Great. And inside the site, you're going to find a couple of my art videos.
Leafbox:
Okay. Well, Arturo, I really appreciate your time today. It's been long, and sorry for my normy questions. There's a lot to cover and a lot to engage with, but I think the main lesson I got was that I like the emotional detachment. I think that's the best way to look at information. Just trying to be neutral and not emotionally engaged as that helps one keep kind of an open mind, I guess. Yes, right before one get captured by a mimetic cortis
Arturo:
Meaning and whatnot. Exactly. Once they get the emotional side riled up, the reason just gets thrown out on the toilet. So it is just like, why are they wanting me to feel so sad about this? Or why are they telling me this now? Just, yeah, it is not being afraid of those things and knowing that whatever happens in the news, unless it's like in your area or anything, you can always just turn it off and it's like literally nothing happened because we worry about things that really ephemeral or just things about status. Celebrities don't get emotional on the internet. Take that. This story, as I said, it's ooh, it's this awesome story that at the end I wanted a puzzle with adventure and in intrigue, and boy did I get it.
Researcher and Artist Arturo Tafoya
He archives videos ConspiracyDistillery.com or on Youtube