My Story and Why I'm Starting This Blog

 I want to start off by sharing a bit about myself and explain why I'm doing this blog. I think it's important to show the context of where I'm coming from before people start telling me I need to 'wake up' or 'do my research'. I spent 12 years being a 'truther' which is a word used to describe someone who is completely immersed in conspiracy theories. Trust me, there's no part of the conspiracy world I haven't looked into. If you can relate to any part of my story, then please give me a chance and read my blogs before calling me ignorant or a 'sheep'. My story isn't unique, and this information can ruin people's mental health. In some cases it actually ruins people's lives. And over the past year through people's disbelief in the Covid pandemic, and the 2021 insurrection, many people have died because of it.  This is what motivated me to start this blog and put my perspective out there.
             

 My first introduction to conspiracy theories came through 9/11 documentaries just like SO many others. At the time I kind of accepted the theories but didn't think much about it for a couple of years. I've always liked looking into unsolved mysteries and paranormal things, so considering an unusual and fringe idea wasn't that new to me. Then, late one night, I happened to watch a TV show called 'Satisfied Fool' by a British comedian called Karl Pilkington. The show questioned if intelligence can make you happy, and he spoke with David Icke. I'd never heard of Icke before, and I just had to see the reasoning of how anyone could seriously believe that alien lizards rule the Earth. I mean, questioning if ghosts and ufos are real is one thing, but this? This tiny segment of a TV show started my decent into the 'rabbit hole'. I started watching and reading people like Icke, Alex Jones, Jordan Maxwell, Freeman Fly, Peter Joseph, Erich Von Daniken, David Wilcock and on and on....and on....down the rabbit hole.       

 I slowly started doing nothing else other than researching conspiracy theories. I didn't want to do anything else. I pretty much stopped going out as it felt pointless talking to people if they didn't see everything through the conspiracy lens. I started networking with other truthers on social media and that replaced my social life. I even met my fiance through this networking. By this point, my whole life and identity revolved around conspiracy theories. For a few years I actually felt like this improved my life. I felt happy feeling like I had come across secret knowledge that had awakened me to a truth that had been hidden in plain sight. It did actually improve my knowledge on several things like global politics, theology, ancient history, and how the system is rigged in favour of the elites. The problem was I had put myself in an echo chamber where everything and everyone around me were confirming the same thing. This made my beliefs start crossing a line that I can now see is not healthy or rational. And I think this can easily happen when people are confirming everything to you, so you are encouraging one another to believe more and more irrational things and feeding each other's delusions. It's the same thing that happens in cults. They pull you in with the less irrational beliefs, and then as you become more and more tied to the cult, they can slowly trickle in the more insane ideas which by this point, you will be primed to believe and accept. I started to believe that all global events were orchestrated and were part of an agenda to create the New World Order. I also believed that everything was tied to ancient occult beliefs perpetrated through secret societies.

 In hindsight, I can now see that things started to get really dark for me when I came across the satanic conspiracies. This was around 2009, so way before anything like pizzagate existed. I came across some videos by a guy called John Todd and an ex FBI agent called Ted Gunderson. Gunderson was a senior special agent in charge of the Los Angeles FBI, and he worked on the cases of Marilyn Monroe and the assassination of JFK. The guy has credentials! So when he started explaining how he has worked on several cases which prove that a large influential group of satanists run the world, I believed him. Why wouldn't I at this stage? If you know anything about this conspiracy, you know it involves the worst crimes against animals and children imaginable. Gunderson said that not only are these things real, but satanism is so pervasive, that if you go to a dinner party, statistically at least one person there is part of a satanic cult. I started researching all of the satanic ritual abuse cases. It is one of the darkest things you can believe in. The problem is that the accounts are so heinous that I thought even if there was a small chance they were true, then I had to believe them or it makes me implicit with evil. It really did fill me with so much anxiety and apathy to feel so powerless against such an evil force in the world. Just doing the research alone drags you down, as you are listening to one harrowing account after another. I was well and truly down the rabbit hole. A place of darkness and tunnel vision which never ends, and where there is no light. By this stage, I truly did believe that influential people in the world got their power by practising ancient occult religions and black magic. I stopped watching TV and would only watch movies I thought had hidden occult meanings or messages about the truth. A good example of that would be 'The Matrix' or 'They Live'. I would only wear plain clothes and stopped buying certain products because I saw occult images in logos and brand names. That's how much it permeated my life. I also believed that anyone saying these things aren't true, must be part of the cult. That's what people that make a living from this info tell you. Several of the people who push conspiracy theories, actually have dubious characters or commit crimes which they can conveniently blame on part of the conspiracy by saying 'I was set up and targeted for telling the truth'. Now I can clearly see the problem and manipulation in making people believe that anyone who doesn't agree with you, must be part of the most evil section of society! And there is a good reason why they do this. It's actually a pretty well used strategy when you look at history. I spent a large chunk of what should of been the most carefree years of my life, feeling hopeless that satanic occultists run the world and are trafficking and killing children. I can't help but resent this now and it's awful to see that these beliefs are actually becoming more popular than ever. And the sad fact is, there is no evidence anywhere that large, connected groups of satanists exist. We have evidence of some new age, pagan or even Christian cults which have committed crimes, we have evidence of organised crime like human trafficking, but there is no proof or evidence AT ALL that large organised satanic cults run the world or even a city. I will go into more detail about this in future blogs. I want to be clear that I do believe in organised crime having links to powerful people. Jeffrey Epstein and Keith Raniere being good examples of this. But that doesn't prove what I believed in. It only proves deviant and criminal behaviour by organised criminals. No one can deny that. 

 Now moving on to how I got out of the rabbit hole. This was a complex situation that took several years. It was early 2013 after the Sandy Hook shooting that I started to see truthers talking about hoaxes and crisis actors. This made no sense to me and I didn't buy it, so it started to put me at odds with the community.  Several other theories started to gain popularity in the next few years which I also didn't like or agree with. The main ones being Flat Earth, the trans agenda, white genocide, George Soros being responsible for ANYTHING that happens, Mandela Effect, and probably a few more I can't think of. There was also a relatively high profile satanic ritual abuse case which was obviously a hoax, but truthers bought it. I also got the chance to talk to journalist and author Kevin Cahill who wrote the books 'Who Owns Britian' and 'Who Owns the World'. He had also worked as a political adviser to an ex British prime minister and members of the House of Lords. This really changed my perspective on certain things and helped me understand some things. But it was in 2016 when pizzagate happened, that I started to really see through the cracks of the beliefs I had, and the types of people who were perpetuating them. Many of these beliefs have gained popularity thanks to social media and forums like 4Chan and 8Chan. There is so much disinfo out there from anonymous sources who could be anybody. Before Trump, conspiracies were never partisan. You just believed all elites were the same. Now all of a sudden it was just the Democrats and left wing who are the satanists? This didn't make sense yet truthers seemed to start buying it. It was so obvious to me that pizzagate was fake and only perpetuated to help Trump win the election. Trump new what he was doing when he went on Alex Jones' show and said he was going to lock up Hilary. He never locked up Hilary, and he threw Julien Assange under the bus pretending he'd never heard of Wikileaks. Pizzagate would of never happened without Wikileaks so that is a flat out lie. Once I saw through that, it made me start questioning everything else. Over the next few years I started watching and reading things that debunk the 'Satanic Panic' of the 80's and the crossover now with pizzagate and Qanon. I realised that most of these conspiracy theories are actually right wing tropes that just get regurgitated into different forms. People have become multi-millionaires by perpetuating unproven conspiracy theories. They know that people who believe in them desperately want an answer as to what to do, and it will keep them coming back. They pray on your worst fears and there is always a new threat they are ready to 'expose' for you. It also dawned on me that nothing any of them have ever told me, has actually happened in over 12 years. I can't count how many times I've heard that the world was going to end, the economy was going to collapse, a world war was going to start, and every time....nothing happens.

  I'm so glad that I was able to take a step back from the constant stream of misinformation and fear mongering to start seeing things more rationally. It only took me seeing the lack of actual proof and manipulation tactics in one theory, to start seeing the flaws in the others. It feels like such a weight has lifted from me to not have this insanely dark belief system hanging over me and colouring the way I see everything. It feels nice to be out of the rabbit hole and back to the real world. I feel like I can take a breath again, enjoy simple things, and see the light and a much bigger and brighter picture of the world. I never wanted to believe in these things and see the world as terrible, yet it still happened, and I can see it happening to more and more people. I do still believe in political corruption, and it's pretty obvious that some of the influential people in the world are terrible people, and some are criminals, but that's a far cry from the paranoia of believing that the world is run by possessed satanic peadophiles. I will say though that it wasn't entirely easy to let go of these beliefs. After all, 12 years is a long time to fully believe in something and I had built my entire identity around it, so it was painful to let go is some ways as much as it was a relief. I do sometimes miss the feeling of belonging to a group of people that believe the same as me, but I know I can rebuild my life in a much healthier and productive way than belonging to the 'truther' world.

 If you've made it this far, thanks so much for reading a bit about me. I've tried my best to condense a very long and complex situation, but hopefully you now have some idea of who I am and why I'm starting this blog. Conspiracy theories have become much more pervasive in the last few years and I know first hand how damaging they can be. It doesn't help to write conspiracy theorists off as crazy or stupid. It's so much more nuanced than that. I now believe that this type of info almost invokes a psychosis in you, where you become more and more detached from reason. It's scary to think that I could of been diagnosed with some type of paranoid, psychotic disorder if I would of told my doctor what I believed in, yet now I have moved away from it, I'm totally fine. I would say I have anxiety, but nothing more. I really dread to think what this info would do to someone with serious mental health issues. Fear is a powerful emotion than can make people believe things and act in ways they wouldn't usually. When you have a culture of distrust, any charlatan can come along and act like they have the answers. If you consider yourself a conspiracy theorist, then all I can suggest is to really look at the people you are putting your trust in. Just because you don't trust mainstream media, doesn't mean you can trust 'Info Wars' either. Just because you don't trust 'big pharma' doesn't mean you can trust everyone selling alternative therapies. It's possible that both have an agenda, and most of the time, they do. These are the types of topics I will be covering here. 

Thanks for reading.