For a long time, the digital landscape felt like a murky, alien ocean. As a Canadian—admittedly, a bit on the gullible side—my entry into the fringes of the internet was less of a calculated investigation and more of a jarring awakening. Back around 2015 and 2016, when the early precursors to the modern disinformation machine were coalescing, the environment was genuinely terrifying. I remember stumbling upon the rise of Pepe the Frog memes and the emergence of vitriolic, extremist rhetoric, such as images depicting gas chambers. At the time, that level of unbridled, anonymous hatred was completely foreign to me. It felt like stepping into an alternate reality where the social contract had been shredded, leaving behind a cold, digital vacuum of malice.
Covering these spaces and swimming in those shark-infested waters naturally brought a lingering, background hum of anxiety. There were moments when the threats felt tangible enough that you had to start thinking about personal security—not to the point of living behind a fortress wall, but enough to realize that being a voice of dissent in these arenas has real-world risks. It is a sobering experience to stare into the abyss of the far-right internet. You realize that while these digital battlegrounds feel ephemeral, the anger and the ideologies bleeding out from them are anchored in very real, very dangerous human impulses.
Yet, there is a strange, dark irony to how these figures operate, especially when they clash with those trying to expose them. When Alex Jones recently took aim at my work on X (formerly Twitter), the response was telling. Far from the tidal wave of vitriol one might expect, many of his own supporters actually pushed back, telling him that he was missing the joke and embarrassing himself. It was a surreal moment of clarity. It highlighted that even within the most rigid echo chambers, the line between performative outrage and genuine belief is remarkably thin. Watching him get so worked up over what was essentially a project born from us simply making each other laugh was a stark reminder of how fragile these personas—and the influence they wield—can be.
This dynamic also suggests that the monolithic power of figures like Jones is, quite frankly, waning. The movement itself is showing its fractures; these influencers are often at war with their own allies, including people as central to their ideology as Donald Trump. Their positions shift with the speed of a trend cycle, often driven by nothing more than the cynical need to move inventory or tap into whatever current grievance will keep the audience paying. You see them pivot on issues like international conflict, not necessarily out of a firm moral compass, but because they are constantly maneuvering to maintain their relevance. At the end of the day, someone has to buy the supplements, and the show must go on.
Despite the inherent cynicism of that professional ecosystem, the work of documenting and satirizing it eventually took on a deeper, more necessary meaning. Initially, it was just about the absurdity—a way to process the ridiculousness of men shouting into microphones for profit. But as I dove deeper, I started to understand the real-world wreckage left in the wake of these conspiracies. Learning about the families who have been harassed and the lives that have been dismantled by these calculated campaigns of misinformation transformed the project. It shifted from being just a source of dark comedy to a matter of accountability. Suddenly, the objective wasn’t just to laugh; it was to hold a light up to systems of retribution and injustice.
Looking back, the evolution from a curious observer to someone deeply entrenched in this world feels like a long, winding road. When you ask how I ended up as the creative director of this “new” iteration of the project—the bridge between documenting the chaos and actively subverting it—it feels like a decision that was years in the making. It wasn’t a sudden pivot, but a gradual realization that silence isn’t an option. The journey began at that crossroads of confusion and mild danger, and it leads here: to a place where, despite the toxicity of the subject matter, the goal has become something surprisingly noble. It is the work of turning their own weapons against them, exposing the farce, and, hopefully, reclaiming a little bit of sanity in a world that seems determined to trade it for a sales pitch.
