Disinformation wars

I almost never go to chatrooms anymore. But back in 2000 - when it all began, for me at least - I did, quite often.

I haven't quite been feeling well since I had my two fillings done. I think the resin composite has been giving off bisphenol-A, an endocrine disruptor that mimics estrogen. And it's been making me feel depressed and sad. I'm still deciding what to do about this.

In that sad mood, I actually visited a chatroom the other day. And I had an experience that really reminded me of something I read in a Vernor Vinge novel, 'A Deepness in the Sky.' It also reminds me of something I read on fsk's blog somewhere about how it's possible to alter telephone conversations in real time, mimicking the voices of the people speaking.

I went in as a guest and then randomly made a silly name for myself, FilteredSentence, because some obnoxious person kept posting a URL and the chatroom kept sending a message that said 'sentence filtered - no URLs allowed' or something to that effect. I just sat there watching and occasionally made a comment. I even harassed somebody who seemed to be an FBI agent pretending to be a little girl attracting pedophiles (although it's possible it really WAS a little girl attracting pedophiles, which is why I didn't say anything too terrible to 'her').

Some guy p2p'd me (person-to-person chat) and behaved as though he thought I had p2p'd him, when I hadn't. We talked a little bit and after a few minutes I told him that I am a victim of electronic mind control. He was tolerant, curious, and compassionate.

He kept talking to me, and I said I wanted to study materials science to learn about how electromagnetic fields and sound waves interact with matter. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, after having previously been compassionate and tolerant, he said abruptly, 'I think you need to see a doctor.' Then he totally stopped answering.

By now, I'm old and cynical. I know that there's something wrong with the world. So I decided this probably wasn't his fault. I wrote something like, 'Thank you for your compassion. I'm not in any immediate danger and I'm going to be okay.' Then I let him go. I didn't keep trying to make him reply to me.

When people do strange things in chatrooms, if all of a sudden they stop answering, if they stop emailing, if they suddenly cut off communications or make a sudden drastic change in behavior, it's probably not their fault. I'm more inclined towards the "network corrupt" theory nowadays. In the Vernor Vinge book, some of the characters figured out that the (spoiler warning! if you haven't read this book! are you sure you want to read this spoiler? it's a really, really good book :) ) aliens were controlling the network, and altering all the information going across it, changing things, deleting things, and posting disinformation on the internet. Okay, that's not that much of a spoiler. That's pretty vague. But anyway, that scene made me laugh. They decided they had to hand-write all their military commands on paper and they could only speak to people in person, not by phone or over the net. It's ridiculous and true at the same time.

But anyway, sometimes I think that's what's going on in my own life. That's why I could relate so well to that book. (Granted, I've written about aliens before and my reasons why I choose to assume that all the phenomena are being caused by humans. But the basic idea is still valid.)

I remember another guy who used to go to that chatroom, and he was a victim long before I knew I was. He would always talk to the main room about his ESP-like experiences and things like that. I had several conversations with him and he was sometimes distrusting, but very clearly intelligent and articulate. But it frustrated me because he was so far away and I knew I would never communicate with the real person.

And every now and then, we'd be in the middle of a chat with each other, and all of a sudden he'd say things that seemed 'incongruent,' somehow, like he didn't see what I'd written, or like he had seen something different from what I'd said. His behavior was just kind of unpredictable. Back then, I assumed that he was slightly mentally ill - but back then, I also believed in ESP and psychic powers. So I thought he was sick with some disease that enhanced his psychic abilities. If anything strange ever happened, I just passed it off as being caused by his mental illness. But nowadays, looking back, I wonder. It's possible that he and I were speaking perfectly clearly to each other, but somebody intervened to screw things up.

When I googled 'operation network corrupt,' hoping that somebody might have mentioned that scene from the Vernor Vinge book, I didn't find it, but I found stuff talking about our own military's network warfare - for instance, "Army activates network warfare unit" and the military's network warfare page.

Now, I'm not saying that THOSE SPECIFIC operations are responsible for the things I experience. I'm just saying that, in general, that type of thing exists, and those are examples. I always emphasize that many different agencies, governments, countries, corporations, groups, and individuals are fighting an enormous information war, and you can never know which specific people are responsible for which incidents. That's the whole point of disinformation - to make it look like somebody ELSE did it, not you.

I haven't yet told the whole story of what exactly started happening to me in 2000. (It actually began before that, but I became more aware of it and began to understand it in 2000.) And this probably isn't the right time to tell it all, since I have to go to work today.

But I've learned some things over the past few years. I've learned that sometimes, people aren't responsible for what they do - they're puppets. While googling Vernor Vinge, I saw he's written a book called 'Synthetic Serendipity.' I haven't read the book, but that's a good phrase to describe what I usually call 'puppeteering.'

Here's a trivial example, one of the 'painless' incidents that didn't actually do anything bad. I wrote a blog about my obsession with growing long hair and how I used to want to be a hairstylist. And at the end I wrote a list of 'don'ts.' I know from experience just how awful it is trying to untangle long hair that's been blowing in the wind. Well, the next day, a guy rode his bicycle across the road directly in front of my car when I was at a stop light. I don't call these things luck or coincidence anymore. This bicycle guy had a long beard and long hair that looked like it hadn't been brushed in years. It was a stringy, matted mane of tangles, knots, and dreadlocks.

I didn't even get annoyed. It's difficult to perturb me nowadays. I see these 'coincidences' all the time, every day. When I see them, I just keep going. It's all part of the 'synthetic serendipity' that I experience. I endure these events, while at the same time, I quietly send them off to my long-term to-do list, among the many things that need to be understood, the things that I can't pass off as merely some supernatural or mystical events, some mysterious will of the deity or whatever. That's not a good enough explanation for me. I need to know HOW - all the way down at the level of 'one quark bumps into another quark.' If you don't know how it's done, you can't protect yourself against it.

I endure these events, yet at the same time, I'm sick of the disinformation wars. Real human beings are getting hurt.

I'm thinking of how we'll live through the next millennium and make life not just bearable, but enjoyable, meaningful, and fulfilling for as many people as we can.