Recently I have been rather bizarrely targeted on Twitter by an account called Chronic0ps sharing “research” about my “connections”. I know this Anon from the Lift the Veil chat community, although I haven’t seen them around there for quite some time. Jack Posobiec revealed “we’re scraping all the Discord chats”, so we know that the intelligence community are data-mining social media, especially any channels that consider the possibility that media events may be staged by crisis actors. Is this person just a curious bystander, or does their obsession indicate some sort of professional interest?
These maps are produced using a free data visualization tool called Gephi. Basically, they suck a lot of data in from the Twitter API, then apply filters and drag and drop names to create “data maps”. By moving certain names closer to the edge of the screen and each other, they can make the connections and maps appear denser. Certain patterns can be color-coded.
Chronic0ps just released a video claiming to explain it. It sure did: it shows all they are doing is dragging and dropping names together to get the result they want, usually making someone look “connected”. Then they can screen cap the image and use it for further discussion as “proof”.
People appear close to each other in the data map, not because the data mining has revealed some secret connection, but simply because the human operator has dragged them to be close to each other.
In reality, it proves nothing. If I like, retweet, or comment on somebody else’s Tweet, it does not mean that I am working for them, know them in real life, or are “connected” any further than bumping into people on the Internet. I have just under 5,000 twitter followers on @steveouttrim and just over 15,000 @burnersdotme ; a few thousand more on Instagram and subscribed here on WordPress, and more than a quarter of a million on Facebook. How many of these people do I actually know, and how many do I really follow and interact with? Maybe 1-2,000, total. Given such a large dataset, though, it is possible to drag and drop names within it and change filter settings to create pretty much any grouping or clustering or color code you want. Just drag a controversial figure like “David Duke” next to me, if I retweet something from President Trump and so do they, it can be made to look like we are both “connected” to Trump and each other.
Now we have a known LARPer “JB” admitting that these data sets are the new memes, and should be used for the 2020 election.
Interesting that this account has been taken down since we originally published this post. Here’s a screenshot of the Tweet:
You’ll note that he is not encouraging research into if there are actually connections of any substance. Just the manipulation of the data sets to create the impression of connections, which are then to be preserved on the blockchain forever. If a journalists writes content that is ideologically aligned to AntiFa, it seems likely that AntiFa followers will retweet, like or comment on that content. Does that mean that journalist is part of AntiFa? Not at all, this is two logical fallacies at once, a non sequitur and guilt by association.
I presume this is the same JB who claims to have founded #QAnon with Defango and Microchip, since they are all retweeting each other. These guys claim to have created Q as a LARP to troll the Christian right. You can read my debunking of that and also my analysis of what has really been going on with the Q psyop.
Part 1 #QAnon: Blind Items Revealed – #All4aLARP?
Part 2 Aleksander Qgin and the Qouncil for National Policy
The video below is an example of how these data sets are then manipulated with sophistry to spin a narrative. It doesn’t matter if it’s “true” or not, since it’s not really showing anything anyway. The underlying science is so far over most peoples’ heads that they will believe anything the presenter suggests. You will note Defango saying “very interesting” quite often, as if he is presenting some sort of vast conspiracy. But he never actually states why it is interesting, or what sort of conspiracy he thinks this “data science” is illustrating. Just “everyone on this map is part of a psyop”, something that Chronic0ps himself does not conclude.
Defango’s description is a lot of words but really not saying anything in particular.
The code doesn’t make up things, it just shows you what it knows how to do and how it’s doing it. Right now there are so many psyops running and people blame the wrong people for “promoting” it. When you look at the digital footprint on twitter of Cicada 3301 overlayed with Qanon you will notice something pretty strange. There are many things that are missed with connections, sometimes people forget that public platforms with public api’s allow people to do some amazing things if they have some skill. I was hoping for someone with this skill to start making some graphs of whats really going on and it’s a great piece of information.
“The code doesn’t make up things”, says Defango, but in Chronic0ps video it shows quite clearly how dragging and dropping names to different positions on the map paints different pictures. They can just keep doing it until they get the picture that they want; what the picture actually demonstrates is never explained by anyone.
Chronic0ps admits that the point of what they are doing is to control people through information. This is propaganda, or as Michael Aquino calls it, “Lesser Black Magic”.
I tweet with the #QAnon hashtag all the time, that’s an audience I want to be in. #AntiFa or #Cicada3301 are not. Unlike Defango, I don’t play puzzle LARP games on the Internet. In fact the only reason I am connected to Cicada 3301 is because I try to follow anyone who has anything to do with that network, either for or against. Chronic0ps knows that, because I told him directly. This does nothing to stop the data being used to infer things that are untrue because that suits a narrative. The current narrative is that anyone who criticizes Defango is part of an organized gang that is stalking him. The truth is that Defango has threatened me and constantly lies about me, I have a right to defend myself from his slander to also to express my opinion of him. Nobody has to pay me or encourage me to do that, he brings it on himself with shows like the above.
Projecting onto your opponents the crimes and bad behavior of yourself is straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
Here’s my chat log with @chronic0ps , who has been studying me for almost a year now.
I have long sided with those who believed that the Cicada puzzle came from the intelligence community and was being used by the NSA as a recruitment tool. One strong piece of evidence for that in my opinion is that it’s promoted in a book of puzzles that the NSA funded their “Scholar in Residence” to write:
See also Secret society seeks world’s brightest: Recruits navigate ‘darknet’ filled with terrorism, drugs – Washington Times (2013)
It has now come out that Cicada 3301 was founded by Bruce C Clarke, Jr, the former head of the CIA’s research division; and co-founder Thomas Schoenberger previously worked for the Pentagon, possibly on remote viewing projects such as STARGATE or GRILL FLAME.
I connected Defango to IARPA, the Intelligence Community’s DARPA, in August 2017. See America’s New Q Branch, WIRED (2008). Defango has since admitted that he was indeed a participant in IARPA’s Project CREATE, which gave him access to unique analysis tools and required him to sign a secrecy agreement with the government. Defango has also admitted to participating in another government project the US Department of Arts and Culture and has had meetings with people who work in Homeland Security Fusion Centers and well-financed (dis)information operations.
Not every channel I listed is a #govLARPer or an IARPA agent, but some of them definitely are.
I spoke about Memetic Warfare and Weaponized A.I. Propaganda in Silicon Valley’s Secret Weapon – The Shadow History of Burners Part 7: Social Engineering on the Electronic Frontier.
You can download the Powerpoint presentation with citations here and see the rest of the series here.
This presentation on Memetic Warfare is very thorough, and eye-opening.
Presentation-Military-Memetics-Tutorial-13-Dec-11Here’s a 2018 paper equating Data Science and Memetic Warfare.
zBeynon-MacKinnonThesis-FinalThis next one talks specifically about meme magic:
in 2005 the Marines were planning a “Meme Warfare Center”:
I collect stuff like this. I want to know what they’re doing to us. It seems that these Data Maps are the latest tool that will be used for cyber-bullying and smear campaigns – directed not just at their targets, but also the followers of those targets.