I remember before the internet, and the minute the internet was available, I had private tutors come over to my house and teach me. From day one, the awe of it. The whole world is at your fingertips with a few clicks of your mouse. The power of it takes my breath away.

Would you do me a favor and just introduce yourself real quick? Just so that we have it —

— I don’t want to use my name.

OK. Can you just introduce yourself maybe just with your first name?

Well no, because that’s my name on Twitter.

Mm.

My nickname is Sam. So you can just call me Sam.

Sure.

You want me to do an introduction? Like, hi, this is Sam. I got out of the Q cult. So should you. (LAUGHS)

Had you ever been attracted to a conspiracy theory before?

No. No, not at all. The 9/11, the moon, the flat Earth — no. But I know the financial system is rigged against us. I’ve watched it. I’ve lived it.

In 2008.

I lost everything in the housing collapse.

And then —

— the government bailed out all the banks. The banks got all the money, got all the houses, got all the bailout money. And you can’t help but reflect upon all that you’ve managed to lose because of the unfair banking system. And I was, you know, kind of in mourning. So I would had different stages. You go through a grieving process, you go to anger. I pretty much got stuck in anger.

And then —

— when Irma came through —

— I was just devastated, again.

It was a nightmare.

Got out with maybe 10 percent of my belongings and my car. And my friend’s like, “Well, just come live with me.” I’d known him 10 years, and so I didn’t mind coming in and moving in as a roommate.

I was here in a new town, living in a friend’s living room, like the kid that just got out of college and was trying to figure out what to do with their life. So I was very emotionally fragile at that time. And I wasn’t working. I had a lot of time on my hands. And I spent a lot of time online.

I had the whole house to myself all day. And I would put YouTube onto the giant TV.

And then YouTube recommended the QAnon to me. That’s how I found them.

Before you found Q, like right before that, what YouTube videos were you watching?

Before Q?

Mm-hm.

A lot of music.

I would listen to “Whiskey.”

By Trampled by Turtles.

And Pentatonix’s “Hallelujah.”

I watched Elizabeth Warren.

She is amazing.

She did an analysis of how the monetary system is set up to favor the wealthy.

It’s about an hour-and-a-half-long video. I’ve probably watched it four times.

It gave me an explanation as why it’s so difficult to thrive.

It helped me to not personalize it, that I did something wrong. [LAUGHING] You know?

And then I was watching Lynette Zang.

She’s a financial analyst.

She’s definitely all about holding gold.

I would watch the SGT report, too.

Another pundit on the global banking system and what’s going on with the market.

I really enjoyed his channel a lot.

And I would watch Jim Willie, who is the author of “The Golden Jackass.” It’s all about asset-backed currency.

That’s what I was watching.

All day.

And I wonder at the time, was that your main source of information? Were you also looking at more mainstream news outlets?

Definitely watched mainstream news. Absolutely. Because then you can cross compare what they say to what’s really going on.

That’s when YouTube recommended this video to me about QAnon.

Katie G. was her name.

She was adorable.

And funny, and giggly.

And smart.

She was a deep diver. She was what I consider to be a research-based analyst.

Very impressive lady.

In my mind, OK, they’re going to go after the banks.

And the politicians that are on the payola and doing deals behind closed doors that are unaudited. That’s what sucked me in.

I felt like a part of something that was really meaningful.

That we’re fixing everything. The world’s going to change. The good guys are winning.

And I couldn’t wait to see the next Katie G. video.

Or DeceptionBytes video.

And I would wait, anticipate every drop. I couldn’t wait to see what was going to be next.

When a new Q drop would come, I would have a visceral reaction.

Like a physical joy.

Goose bumps.

What got me out was they posted Bible verses. And I just immediately knew —

— that it was fake.

I was like, OK, let me get this straight. We’re a military intelligence. We’ve got a secret channel that we can communicate, and we’re going to proselytize about the Bible and risk a military channel that’s leaking? No.

So —

It makes no sense at all to me. It’s because my father was military. I grew up in — he was military ops. I knew that that was just a marketing ploy. I mean, they were hitting their market base. Their market base are conservative church ladies. The middle America. The Joe Sixpack. That’s who they’re marketing. And they wanted to bring the religious aspect in so they could broaden their base so they can make more money on the T-shirts, and the mugs, and the donations, and the app memberships.

So you felt like Q, whoever it was, had been taking a risk by posting these secrets and this classified information? And that if Q were real and really part of this military intelligence operation, that they wouldn’t post a Bible verse because it was —

You’re either military intelligence, or you’re a preacher. And if you’re a military preacher, you’re in a chapel. You’re not next to the president. It was just logic. It was just an instant, to me, an instant pulling back of the curtain of what they were doing. And the minute I saw that, I was just crestfallen. Because I knew that it was all fake. And it was the instant. It was like a death. And then I was angry again. And I said, well, you know, there is no hope. This is just ridiculous. There’s no way. This is not real. I’ve wasted three months of my life researching fakeness. I really felt like I’d been had.

How much time are you spending online now?

Well, now that the coronavirus lockdown has started, now I’m not working, I’m spending quite a bit of time. I probably spend watching what’s going on now probably about four hours a day.

And do you ever worry that you could fall into something like QAnon again?

Absolutely not. I am so cynical. I am so done. I just don’t believe anything anymore. [LAUGHS]

Well, say more about that.

I mean, I lost my job because of the Covid. I was vested for retirement this year. And I haven’t worked. My kids haven’t worked, because we are all in hospitality. And I have tried to reach unemployment for three weeks. I got them on the phone today. She spent an hour trying to register me for unemployment, and the computer wouldn’t let her. And she can’t mail me a letter. She can’t call me back. So I have to spend another three weeks trying to get them on the phone. In the meantime, my landlord gave me a three-day notice in the middle of a rent moratorium.

I guess I’m —

No, I’m so done. It’s not there. There is no awakening.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I’m remembering you saying that when you found Q, you were pretty cynical and thought the government was screwing you and things were unfair, and you had a lot of time on your hands. And I think, I mean, that’s sort of what you’re saying your life is like now, right?

Yeah. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. No way. Q is a lie. [LAUGHS] Our system is all set up towards the people in control.

But isn’t that what Q is saying?

He is saying that, and that’s why I got sucked in. But remember, he’s also saying that he talks to the president and that the intel he’s getting is direct from the government. My thing is the source. Q’s source is a lie. Therefore, anything he says or Q drops say are suspect and questionable.

Even though you don’t think Q is real, you’re still allowing that some of what Q has said might be true?

Those things were true before I found Q, and those things are marketing tools for Q to grow his client base.

Do you still believe in some sort of global cabal?

It’s not whether I believe it or not. It’s true.

QAnon, as a movement, continues to grow. And as it does, its message is being amplified by people with real political power, including President Trump —

— who has used his Twitter account to retweet or respond to QAnon messages or QAnon-related accounts dozens of times.

All right, so Kevin, as you and I are talking today in June 2020, a year into all this — kind of a big question, but like, where is it things stand with the internet?

Well, right now, we’re in this really interesting moment. All these big social media platforms, they’re getting more criticism than they ever have —

— with some of the loudest voices saying that they’re exerting too much control over what appears on their platforms.

And as they pull more things down and make more new rules —

— that act of control actually fuels this notion among certain corners of the internet —

— that there is this secret, forbidden knowledge out there.

At the exact same time —

— they have never been more popular.

Twitter just reported that its usage has grown 23 percent since last year. Facebook has said that, in some of the countries that were hit hardest by the coronavirus, the time that people are spending on its apps has increased by as much as 70 percent.

And so many people are watching so much YouTube —

— that the company actually had to lower the quality of its videos to keep the internet from overloading.

YouTube wouldn’t tell me exactly how much watch time has jumped up. But one data firm estimated that 15 percent of all traffic on the internet right now is coming from people watching YouTube videos. That’s almost double what it was last year.

And just looking forward to what this all means —

In survey after survey over the last few years, when young people around the world are asked what they want to do with their lives —

— they respond that they want to be online influencers.

There was this one survey where they gave kids a bunch of options, like do you want to be a scientist, or a lawyer, or an astronaut? And the kids basically said, overwhelmingly, no. I want to be famous on social media.

Last year, I actually went to go talk to some of those aspiring online influencers at this event called VidCon.

Which is the biggest convention of social media influencers in the world.

And all these influencers show up —

— in Southern California.

With their entourages. And they do these meet and greets with their fans. And they get courted by agents and all these huge brands.

And then they go off to these like lavish private parties.

And it’s kind of a big celebration of this multi-billion-dollar industry that a ton of people are clamoring to break into. And, increasingly, where they told me they were trying to break in and get noticed —

— wasn’t YouTube.

It was TikTok.

It’s full of silly lip syncs and memes.

People dancing to pop songs. Lots of animals.

Lots of cats.

It’s just fun.

Which is exactly how it was designed to feel.

And what do you mean that?

So unlike a lot of American social media companies, which started off as basically open platforms and have only recently started to implement more rules and restrictions, TikTok is owned by this Chinese company, ByteDance, which has been way more heavy-handed in curating and controlling what appears on its app. Whether that’s meant hiding controversial political speech, or more subtle things, like making sure that the people whose posts show up on the main feed look happy and beautiful. And it seems like what they’re really trying to do is to create the most entertaining, light, glossy version of reality that they can.

And it’s working. People love TikTok. They’ve downloaded it something like 1.5 billion times.

It’s the fastest growing app in the world.

Just as a point of context, the number one star on TikTok is a 16-year-old girl who went from 0 to 60 million followers in a year.

Which took PewDiePie on YouTube eight years.

And, of course, a lot of what’s fueling TikTok’s success is an incredibly sophisticated algorithm. Just like the ones that run YouTube and Facebook and all the other big social media platforms, TikTok’s algorithm is constantly learning from people what they want to see, and what will capture and keep their attention. And actually, ByteDance, this Chinese tech company, it doesn’t even really see TikTok or any of the other apps it owns as its primary product because ByteDance has this huge, advanced artificial intelligence lab — one of the biggest in the world. And its goal, way beyond just making a fun social media app, is to become the world leader in the development of superpowered A.I.

OK, Kevin. So in our attempts to better understand what the internet is doing to us, here’s where it sounds like we’re landing.

Mm-hmm.

First, we know that the internet is largely being run by these sophisticated artificial intelligences that have tapped into our base impulses, our deepest desires, whether we would admit that or not. And they’ve used that information to show us a picture of reality that is hyperbolic and polarizing and entertaining and, essentially, distorted.

Right.

And now there are even more of these algorithms than ever before, and they are getting even smarter.

And they’re doing that in part because the technology is just getting better. But it’s also because we are giving them exactly what they are programmed to want, which is more of our attention.

Right. And so, in the end, what we have is a situation where the A.I.s keep showing us this distorted reality. And then we keep paying attention to that. And in doing so, we are telling them that we would like to see more of this distorted reality. And, essentially, we’re living inside of this loop that’s getting faster and faster and showing us a world that is getting more and more and more distorted.

Right.

And the more and more time we spend online, the more this distorted vision of the world actually becomes our reality.

“Rabbit Hole” was made by Julia Longoria, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Brad Fisher, Dan Powell, Kevin Roose, and me, Andy Mills. Music by Peter Lalish, Dan Powell, and Nate Henricks. Special thanks to Charlie Warzel, Mike Benoist, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Nora Keller, Ali Watkins, Nina Pathak, Jazmin Aguilera, Topher Routh, and Trey Shilts at Berkeley Advanced Media Studios, and Lisa Tobin and Sam Dolnick.