Joe Rogan Experience #1710 - Cullen Hoback

Cullen Hoback 0:00 (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night! All day! (instrumental music plays) What's up, man? How are you?

Cullen Hoback 0:14 Uh, I'm good.

Joe Rogan 0:15 (laughs)

Cullen Hoback 0:16 I'm good. You know, it's- it's, uh, it's ex- it's really exciting to be here. I- I... There was this... Right before we got rolling, I was mentioning, you know, I- I d- I tweeted back in April, uh, "Would love to, would love to, uh, go on Joe Rogan's podcast at some point."

Joe Rogan 0:29 Is that when the documentary series came out, in April?

Cullen Hoback 0:32 Y- yeah. So it, it, it premiered in March, like end of March.

Joe Rogan 0:35 Oh.

Cullen Hoback 0:36 And then it was rolled out in, uh, two-episode-per-weekend installments. So it took three weeks for the whole, the whole thing to, to, you know, release. And, uh, it was actually really exciting because it was y- you had the audience reacting in, in real time.

Joe Rogan 0:53 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 0:53 You know, there, there'd be a week to see, okay, well, how, you know, how is the Q-munity receiving this, you know? How is the-

Joe Rogan 0:58 Did you say-

Cullen Hoback 0:58 ... mainstream media?

Joe Rogan 0:58 ... "the Q-munity"?

Cullen Hoback 0:59 The Q-munity, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00 You really said that?

Cullen Hoback 1:01 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01 Is that what they call themselves?

Cullen Hoback 1:02 I mean, I have so much of this-

Joe Rogan 1:03 (laughs)

Cullen Hoback 1:03 ... like lexicon now that I can't, that I can't avoid. It's just-

Joe Rogan 1:06 Uh, it was funny.

Cullen Hoback 1:07 You know, I say it at the beginning of the series.

Joe Rogan 1:08 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 1:08 Like, it seeps into your thoughts. It really does, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:10 Right. Clinton, body count, right? Like you-

Cullen Hoback 1:12 Clinton, body count, 17.

Joe Rogan 1:13 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 1:14 Can't, can't say that without thinking Q.

Joe Rogan 1:16 Right, right.

Cullen Hoback 1:16 Uh, impossible. Just a number. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:18 Yeah. Well, it was, uh ... Y- it's really well done, I just want to say. You- you've- you did a fantastic job. It's really excellent.

Cullen Hoback 1:25 Thank you. Thank you.

Joe Rogan 1:26 And it's such a compelling subject. And it's- it opens up so many conversations on censorship, on t- you know, like, what is the truth? And how, how important is it to know what's, what's real and what's not real? It's a ... It's such a complex and unusual conversation that we have to have today about misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and this whole Q thing, which is just like ... It, it, to me, embodies the perfect example of what's like worst-case scenario if someone just started making up some wild shit. We, we assume making up wild shit-

Cullen Hoback 2:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:17 ... online-

Cullen Hoback 2:17 It's a safe assumption.

Joe Rogan 2:18 ... and got a- a- an enormous group of people to go along with it, and then they wind up attacking Capitol. I mean, when they, when they attacked the Capitol Building, when, when they stormed the Capitol Building and you realize like, oh my god, like this is literally like the wings of the butterfly create the storm, and then here it is. Like, a thing that y- looked preposterous just a couple a years ago, when people were talking about all the Q drops and all this like, uh, uh ... The people that I knew that are into QAnon ... Jamie pointed out earlier that a lot of 'em were the same people that are into flat Earth.

Cullen Hoback 2:55 Mm.

Joe Rogan 2:56 It's the same sort of folks, like kinda, uh, without w- you know, uncharitable terms, unsophisticated, gullible, and into secrets-

Cullen Hoback 3:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:06 ... into finding out secrets.

Cullen Hoback 3:08 I mean, I would say that in my experience there weren't too many QAnons who were also big flat-Earthers-

Joe Rogan 3:14 I can introduce you to a few.

Cullen Hoback 3:14 ... or maybe they had, they had, they had set that aside a little bit. But you ... I mean, you see in episode one, uh, Liz Crokin who is a big Q tuber, big sort of celebrity, um, in terms of like analyzing Q drops and talking about the meaning. You know, she ... I bring that up to her. I'm like, "Well, what about flat Earth?" And she's like, "You know, uh, uh, tell me any ... Nothing's too crazy," right?

Joe Rogan 3:35 Right.

Cullen Hoback 3:35 You know, it's like... And this is the thing about Q. It's like, Q ... And I think a lot of people were attracted to this premise because it, it, it, it feeds correctly into a d- d- ... you know, this notion that we should be skeptical of things, was question everything. Question everything. You know, question whether or not the, uh, the Earth is flat. Question whether or not (laughs) , you know ... Uh, a- and in the beginning, um, that included questioning Q. And that faded away pretty quickly, you know. A- a few months into QAnon, you could question anything as long as it -you didn't question Q.

Joe Rogan 4:11 Mm.

Cullen Hoback 4:12 And it was inter- ... You jumped right to, right to January 6th (laughs) , right, you know?

Joe Rogan 4:18 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 4:18 Sort of the, the finish line. Um, you know, and I ... When I think of Jan 6th, like I don't think, I don't think it would have happened, um, without QAnon. I also don't think it happened solely because of QAnon, right?

Joe Rogan 4:30 I think that's fair.

Cullen Hoback 4:30 There were a lot of-

Joe Rogan 4:31 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 4:31 There were a lot of, um, uh, forces that coalesced that day.

Joe Rogan 4:37 Yeah. I- I would agree with you, 100%. I think it's, um ... It's such a strange time, you know, where people are learning how to use social media, and then we're also aware that social media is heavily manipulated by foreign countries. Um, that they're ... You know, you're at w- I'm sure you're aware of the Internet Research Agency-

Cullen Hoback 5:00 Sure, yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:00 ... in Russia, this whole, b- essentially a troll farm that's designed to fuck with us-

Cullen Hoback 5:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:08 ... and very successfully. And R- Renee DiResta's highlighted this s- uh, really well. And, uh, it's r- it was really interesting to talk to her and find out how deep the rabbit hole goes with this stuff, and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of memes, often hilarious memes, that get shared on, uh, social media, created by Russia.

Cullen Hoback 5:30 (laughs) I mean, can you imagine, uh, getting that job in Russia where it's like your job will be to be a meme-smith?

Joe Rogan 5:35 Your job is make funny-

Cullen Hoback 5:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:37 ... with American politics. Good luck. Yeah, like what do you, uh ... Like, where do you start?

Cullen Hoback 5:43 Yeah. I mean, that was one of the questions I- I've had. When you're ... You're looking at something like 8chan, now Akun, where, you know, Q had been posting. And we talk about free speech on those platforms, and-

Joe Rogan 5:59 (laughs)

Cullen Hoback 5:59 ... um, this idea that y- you know, anyone can post whatever they want, um, within, you know, sort of the, the limits of free speech, right? Like there are certain things which are illegal.Um, but does that protect people who are abroad as well? You know, free speech traditionally in America would protect American citizens, but in the case of the internet, you know, the internet is global. So that means that you can have actors in South Africa or in Russia posting on these sites, uh, protected under the same, um, same, uh, premise as, uh, as what Americans are accustomed to, and able to use speech, uh, against America-

Joe Rogan 6:36 Hmm.

Cullen Hoback 6:37 ... in, in certain instances. So what you're describing, you know, (laughs) these kind of meme smiths, meme smiths in Russia are in some ways using f- free speech against us, right?

Joe Rogan 6:46 I guess. Yeah. I mean, I guess. I think what it's doing, uh, uh... (sighs) This is, um, a v- an odd idea, but I think what it's doing is it's forcing us to adapt and evolve our ability to dedec- to detect bullshit, and it's doing it almost like an immune system response. Like, what, what we're reacting to and what we're recognizing from all this stuff is like, "Oh, we didn't know what this was, and this has, uh, r- resulted in this riot, whatever you wanna call the Capitol Hill attack, and now we're looking at more censorship on social media." We're looking at, uh, you know, like, them trying to batten down the hatches and figure out how to handle something like QAnon or the people that were allegedly promoting these ideas, a lot of them that are banned from social media, the, the stuff that you highlighted in your show. We, we have to figure out what's true and what's not true, and so there's been some sort of draconian measures that have been, um, suggested, you know, like, uh, hiring some sort of a team that goes over social media and makes sure that everything is according to what they deem to be correct or incorrect, which obviously is y- y- subject to biases. And we're, we're very aware that that's going on today, that there's a lot of that going on today, where the, the necessarily a truth doesn't like... The Hunter Biden laptop story is a great example of that, right? Like, uh, the social media platforms, they censored news from the New York Post, one of the oldest newspapers in America, on the Hunter Biden laptop story, because they decided that it somehow or another it was propaganda, or somehow or another it was not good to get that information. But it was news, it was real news, it was a real story, and they decided it was too close to the election. "This could hurt Biden, we don't want Trump to win." So you're dealing with biases. This is not just like simply, "Here's information w- that we know to be true," or, "Here's information that we know to be a lie, we're gonna stop that from getting through." No, they knew it to be true, but they decided to stop it because it wasn't convenient or it didn't fit the narrative they were trying to promote.

Cullen Hoback 9:09 Right. It's very, it's... And how do you find a neutral arbiter of-

Joe Rogan 9:13 Right.

Cullen Hoback 9:13 ... the truth-

Joe Rogan 9:14 Right.

Cullen Hoback 9:14 ... um, if, if you are going to entrust someone with that responsibility? And I think that that's, it, it, it's just an incredibly slippery slope.

Joe Rogan 9:22 Incredibly slippery.

Cullen Hoback 9:24 And, uh, and what all these big tech companies have, have, uh, suggested is that, "Well, maybe we don't use humans, maybe we use algorithms-"

Joe Rogan 9:32 AI.

Cullen Hoback 9:32 "... right?"

Joe Rogan 9:33 Right.

Cullen Hoback 9:33 You know, to, to, to moderate everything. And, you know, the algorithms had, had, that, that in many ways had bolstered something like Q because they're, they're basically, uh, sociopathic when it comes to just trying to drive attention as much as possible. So now they can kind of invert those algorithms and, and punish those who, um, talk about, uh, that kind of content. And oftentimes, even if, even if their goal was just to prevent- prevent, I don't know, conversation around, um, QAnon because they consider it to be problematic, what else gets swept up, what else gets swept up with that? Um, I mean, I saw, I saw a lot of people who were reporting on QAnon maybe coming from the, uh, the side of critiquing it. Their videos were being wiped out, um, you know, people who were documenting January the 6th, their content was being wiped out.

Joe Rogan 10:24 So-

Cullen Hoback 10:25 People who are critical of QAnon, they had websites that were, um, sort of on the other side, that was being wiped out as well. And, and that's because, of course, it's, uh, it's sort of this blunt force that, that an, uh, an algorithm wields.

Joe Rogan 10:38 So people even, people that were analyzing the movement from a critical standpoint, people who are looking like, "How ridiculous this is. Look at this," they had their channels wiped out as well?

Cullen Hoback 10:48 Yes.

Joe Rogan 10:49 So any content on QAnon, they just wanna erase it from the internet, es- essentially?

Cullen Hoback 10:54 That seemed to be the, the initial response, yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:57 It's, it's so strange-

Cullen Hoback 10:58 And, and, and, and-

Joe Rogan 10:58 ... that they'd all move together in sync.

Cullen Hoback 11:00 I mean, I, I think that if I did not have, you know, HBO in my sails with this project, it wouldn't have seen the light of day.

Joe Rogan 11:07 Really? Like, if you try to put it on YouTube, you think?

Cullen Hoback 11:10 Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, when we, even when we... So when we first released the series, um, you know, there was, there was, there were some articles floating around like, "Oh, maybe this is gonna make it things worse." Um, if I typed in Q, Into the Storm into YouTube, it wouldn't auto-populate at a certain point. It started out auto-populating and then that went away. So, um, yeah, I, I, I, I wouldn't feel confident at all that, um, you know, if we didn't have a, a gorilla in our corner, uh, that, um, that the story that revealed ultimately who was behind QAnon, uh, would've been seen, would've been able to find an audience. Um, and that-

Joe Rogan 11:53 Well, shout out to HBO.

Cullen Hoback 11:54 (laughs) Shout out to HBO.

Joe Rogan 11:55 I mean, they-

Cullen Hoback 11:55 I mean, they really had my back somehow, so...

Joe Rogan 11:56 They've been amazing for decades, you know, you really think about it. I mean, they're the people that when Bill Maher's show Politically Incorrect got pulled off of, uh, what was it on ABC? I forget.

Cullen Hoback 12:06 Yeah, I'm not sure.

Joe Rogan 12:06 Network television. Um, they immediately took it, brought it over, turned it into Real Time and made it even better. I mean, you know, it's uncensored now and, and it's, i- in my opinion, Real Time with Bill Maher is probably one of the very best social commentary shows and, and comedy shows that, like, really doesn't pull any punches on any network ever.

Cullen Hoback 12:28 You wanna hear something fucking crazy? So y-Gu- yes- just yesterday I was talking with, uh, someone who's helping distribute the film, and I said, "Well, what about Amazon?" You know, "Are we going to be able to put it out on Amazon internationally?" And they said, "Well, as of the last year, they have stopped taking documentaries." All documentaries.

Joe Rogan 12:49 What?

Cullen Hoback 12:50 You cannot publish a documentary-

Joe Rogan 12:52 What?

Cullen Hoback 12:52 ... on, on their platform. And the reason was because, that I was told, (laughs) is because, you know, and there was, there was all this conspiracy, flat earth stuff, and they were, they were getting blowback, that eventually they said, "We don't want to have to decide what we-"

Joe Rogan 13:04 What's real.

Cullen Hoback 13:04 ... "publish and what we don't, what's real and what's not. We're just not going to publish anything."

Joe Rogan 13:09 Oh, my God.

Cullen Hoback 13:09 And the example they gave me that they couldn't get published was The Cove. I don't know if you saw that documentary.

Joe Rogan 13:16 The doc- the dolphin documentary.

Cullen Hoback 13:17 Yeah, the dolph- dolphin documentary.

Joe Rogan 13:19 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 13:19 You know, it won an Oscar.

Joe Rogan 13:20 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 13:20 (laughs) And I, just to, just to check it, you know, I looked it up and sure enough, The Cove wasn't available on, on Amazon. So, you know, and those who said that there wouldn't be a slow creep of censorship, you know, kind of starting with things that I think everybody agrees should be, you know, they wouldn't like to be in society, you know, things like The Daily Stormer, or maybe a lot of people don't want 8chan, you know? It's a ... there's a progression-

Joe Rogan 13:42 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 13:42 ... you know, until you end up, it seems like, something like, (laughs) you know, The, The Cove can't find an audience on a, on a major platform. Um, and I don't want to conflate government censorship with the corporate censorship too much. However, in a lot of ways, it does feel like the government has passed the buck to these corporations to do what they legally can't, which I think is the same thing we saw the government do with privacy, right? Like, they wouldn't have been able to get all of this data from us directly, but if you give it to a Facebook or a Twitter, uh, it's very easy for the government to then go and get access to that information. So I think what we saw happen with the Fourth Amendment, we're now seeing happen with the First Amendment, where they can say, "Well, look, we, we couldn't restrict conversation around certain topics. We couldn't directly, um, decide what's true or what's not. We're going to put that in the hands of these companies." And of course, these companies have, uh, intimate relationships (laughs) with, um, with many members of, of, of the government, you know? There's a revolving door there. So I, I, I ... When people want to talk about what ... limiting what we can say online or limiting, um, disinformation and these other things, I, I think that it's almost the wrong place to start. I think we have to go back to the privacy issues, and I actually think if we had not let privacy be eroded online, we wouldn't even be having this debate. You know? Because if, if these gigantic companies hadn't collected thousands of data points on us, you know, didn't know our fears, our desires, um, if they hadn't built these psychometric profiles, they wouldn't have been able to manipulate us, use these algorithms to drive us into echo chambers, which have really created these disparate realities, and now these disparate realities can't agree necessarily on a set of facts. Um, sometimes you c- you're, you're considered, um, you know, sometimes people will be ostracized for even to talking to somebody from the, quote, unquote, "other side," right? Um, and, and so now there's this conversation about what should be allowed to be said online, uh, and I think that that's simply a byproduct of, of, um, you know, our privacy having been eroded. So, you know, if I was to do anything about these issues, I would start by restoring rights. I would go back and say, "All right, well how do we get," (laughs) you know, "how do we get, um, ownership and privacy rights, um, online when it comes to our, our personal data? Let's start there before we, we start, you know, going after the speech itself."

Joe Rogan 16:19 Do you think that the algorithms are designed to do this, or do you think that it's just a function of human nature that we tend to gravitate towards things that outrage us and then huddle up together in echo chambers, that this is just a natural tribal behavior, and that what the algorithms do is essentially just highlight what we're really interested in?

Cullen Hoback 16:46 They magnify it in a feedback loop, right? So you're right to say that humans do have these traits. Um, you know, and I- I haven't designed the algorithms, but I've also talked to people who have, and, you know, a lot of it, they don't even understand how they work at a certain point. Like, they're off to the races.

Joe Rogan 17:03 Have you seen The Social Dilemma?

Cullen Hoback 17:05 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:06 What, what'd you think about that?

Cullen Hoback 17:07 It's great. It's great.

Joe Rogan 17:08 Amazing, right?

Cullen Hoback 17:08 Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I-

Joe Rogan 17:10 Scary too-

Cullen Hoback 17:12 Uh-

Joe Rogan 17:12 ... the conclusions that they draw.

Cullen Hoback 17:14 Oh, certainly. I mean, I ... Yeah, I made a film about eight years ago called Terms and Conditions May Apply, you know, and that, that came out right before the Edward Snowden revelations, you know, and when it (laughs) came out, pe- uh, the initial response was like, "Oh, this is maybe conspiratorial. Surely the government doesn't have this much insight into our behavior and, and, you know, and access to, um, to our devices and our personal information," and then the Snowden revelations came out, and then it was like, "Oh, well, maybe the series didn't go far enough." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:49 (laughs)

Cullen Hoback 17:49 Um-

Joe Rogan 17:49 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 17:49 ... you know, and I, uh ... And, and back then, we had talked about the idea of how, how is technology influencing us? How is it changing us, manipulating us? And it didn't feel like that was the biggest story at the time. And this question of privacy and how our rights were being eroded through these agreements that nobody ever really reads, and you could find all, all kinds of, uh, juicy tidbits, uh, hidden in there in terms of what the companies were actually doing and kind of revealing this unholy collusion between the government and, and, and big tech. Um, you know, but, uh, it w- at the time people would often say, "Well, what's the cost?" You know, "What's the big deal if they're mining my personal data to serve me with ads?"

Joe Rogan 18:33 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 18:33 And I'd say that, "The environment we find ourselves in now is the cost."

Joe Rogan 18:39 Do you do anything to personally protect your data? Do you, like, use DuckDuckGo for searches-

Cullen Hoback 18:45 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 18:46 ... and thi- things along those lines? You have Brave as a browser. Like, do you do that stuff?

Cullen Hoback 18:49 All that, yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:50 Yeah?

Cullen Hoback 18:50 Yeah. Use Signal.

Joe Rogan 18:51 VPNs?

Cullen Hoback 18:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 18:53 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 18:53 VPNs. I mean, I, I do my best, you know, to... If a government actor really wants to get at you, they're gonna be able to.

Joe Rogan 19:00 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 19:01 I mean, you saw the NSO Clickless spyware-

Joe Rogan 19:04 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 19:04 ... story, right?

Joe Rogan 19:05 Yes.

Cullen Hoback 19:05 I mean, if, if there's a zero day that allows you to get access to a microphone and everything that someone's doing on their phone without them even having to click on a link, you know, it's game over. Co- of course, governments will abuse that.

Joe Rogan 19:21 Yeah. And probably are right now.

Cullen Hoback 19:23 Probably are right now, yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:24 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 19:24 Where's our, where are our phones at? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 19:25 Right there. (laughs) Yeah. It's, um, it's interesting because you would think that there'd be a market for a platform that becomes bulletproof, and there have been some, you know, Linux-based, uh, cellphone operating system phones that they sell. Like, they buy a phone, you get a Google phone, they de-Google it and put different software on it and stuff. But I'm, I'm not sure if that's, like, if, if you're deluding yourself into believing that you're actually protected with that stuff or you actually are protected.

Cullen Hoback 19:59 Right.

Joe Rogan 19:59 I would think they could work around all those things, especially something that's... I mean, it's essentially, like, open source, right? Like, you, like, if it's a Linux-based operating system, there's some super geniuses out there. I'm sure they're gonna be able to hack into that.

Cullen Hoback 20:15 Yeah, I mean, I think with stuff like Signal, you're just, you're just protecting yourself as best you can.

Joe Rogan 20:20 Right.

Cullen Hoback 20:21 You use something that's, that's end-to-end encrypted, you're doing better than 99% of people who are-

Joe Rogan 20:25 Right.

Cullen Hoback 20:26 ... out there. You're making somebody really have to work to get access to your, uh, to your, to your stuff. And if you're using a VPN and you're using DuckDuckGo-

Joe Rogan 20:33 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 20:33 ... then you're, you're minimizing your digital footprint. And you're not as, you're not worth as much to these companies and they're not able to, to, you know, uh, manipulate you, I guess, in the same way through these algos. But let me ask you this. I mean, would you... What would you do about the algorithm problem? Right? 'Cause on the one hand, algorithms are necessary for something like a search engine. On the other hand, um, you know, they are, they drive the most sensational content, things like QAnon, um, and, uh, and I think have largely facilitated the situation we find ourselves in now.

Joe Rogan 21:07 It's a really interesting question, because on one hand, for me, like, when I go to my YouTube page, it highlights the things that I'm interested in. And I'm... When I go to YouTube, in general, I'm interested in entertainment. I mean, that's all I get. I mean, I have a very boring YouTube page. If you go to it, there's a few political talk shows that I listen to, like Breaking Points and, you know, Jimmy Dore and Kyle Kulinski and a few other folks. Uh, and then there's some, a lot of, like, billiards matches and Muay Thai fights. Like, that's, like, most of my YouTube, so it's, it's boring. You know, it's like for, for the average person, there's not... It's not suggesting anything to me that's gonna be, uh, that's gonna lead me down any rabbit holes or... 'Cause I don't use it for that. I use YouTube for, like, "Oh, I got 10 minutes to kill. Let me watch something stupid." You know, "Let me, let me sit here and watch a pool match." You know, that's what I do. But if you're a person that is re- and I've been that person in the past, that's like in- that get- got into conspiracy theories and like, "Is this real?" Like, "Who built the pyramids?" And then next thing you know, you're, you're going down this-

Cullen Hoback 22:17 How do magnets work? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:18 Right. Yeah. (laughs) And you're going down this rabbit hole, and then that becomes your fucking life. Like, one of the things that, to me, was so fascinating about your, your documentary series was seeing into the lives of these people that were utterly obsessed with these Q drops. And it, it becomes a thing that gives life meaning when, you know, for lack of better terms, a lot of those folks in that documentary are misfits. Like, a lot of the, the, the people are a little goofy. They're, they're... you know, the way they talk about things and think about things is a little goofy. And when QAnon came along, it gave them something to latch onto that was bigger than them. They were part of a movement. And you see that same sort of thinking, that same sort of, uh, mental pattern in people that get obsessed with UFOs. You see it in people that get obsessed with political dogma. You, you see it in a lot of things. They become a part of a movement that's far bigger than them. It's one of the reasons why people get so invested in political candidates and, and political campaigns. It's not necessarily that they're looking at the big picture objectively and they think that this is... this, this politician is gonna be better for their lives. It's gonna... they're gonna highlight, um, you know, problems that we have that are... you know, you know, problems that we have with inequality or problems that we have with laws. But mostly, they want their team to win, you know. There, there's a lot of that-

Cullen Hoback 23:51 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 23:51 ... with a lot of people. They, they connect ideologically with a team, and then they get very tribal. And you s- that was a thing that I saw in that documentary. I'm like, "This is a pattern of human behavior." And it's... The QAnon thing just locked into it because it was secretive, it was interesting, the idea that Trump had this insider, you know, and this insider was, like, dropping all this information, that it was all going down. And in Trump, we had this guy that was gonna clean up the swamp. He was gonna find those people that were eating babies and, you know, and all that.

Cullen Hoback 24:27 Yeah. And it was a narrative that, um, that contradicted what people were seeing in the mainstream media-

Joe Rogan 24:32 Yes.

Cullen Hoback 24:32 ... as well. And I think that, uh, uh, a lot of those individuals who voted for Trump and also-... w- gravitated towards QAnon. Um, they wanted to believe that there was this sort of secret story that was happening behind the scenes, you know, where all of these arrests were coming, where, (laughs) where, um, you know, what they had hoped would happen would actually happen. Uh, and I think that, um, I think you... I mean, you hit a lot of the big points there, but, you know. Then that's why QAnon is sort of part religion, part political movement, um, part interactive game. Uh, and it draws in people from the UFO crowd. I mean, it's a big tent for, for all kind of, um, conspiratorial fringe thinking or, um, you know, sort of strong religious convictions as well. I mean, you see a lot of people who are evangelicals who also believe in, in, in QAnon. There's a big overlap there. So I think it's, it's individuals who are looking for community as well-

Joe Rogan 25:33 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 25:33 ... looking for purpose and... You know, I, like, I spent so much time with these guys, right? And I would get phone calls, uh, in the middle of the night, um, where they just wanted to talk, a, a lot of times because they just found me to be a, a grounding force in their lives. And so I would, I would try to always take it when I could, um, and just, uh, give them, give them a, a more neutral perspective (laughs) versus, um, what they might be hearing, especially some of the QTubers.

Joe Rogan 26:03 So some of the QTubers, like, they were going down these paths or these, uh, um, um, you know, they were in these rabbit holes, and then they would call you and go, "Hey man, is this, does this make any sense?"

Cullen Hoback 26:13 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:14 "Am I out of line?"

Cullen Hoback 26:16 I mean, it's-

Joe Rogan 26:16 'Cause they were wrapped up in it-

Cullen Hoback 26:18 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 26:18 ... and they saw you as an objective v- sort of voice of reason?

Cullen Hoback 26:21 I think so, yeah. I mean, I... You see in episode five the, one of the craziest things in the series, which is that, uh, these ex-mil guys, um, whether it's General Flynn or, in this case, General Paul Vallely, um, or Major General, um... Is he a lieutenant major? Anyway, um, he, uh, you know, he's using his ex-mil guys to, uh, seed his political agenda with these QTubers. So what happens is they suddenly have someone who is claiming to have this super secret intel reaching out to them and saying, you know, "Osama bin Laden is actually still alive. Um, would you like to talk about that on your QTube station?" And they're going, well, you know... And, and they're useful because S- someone like, in the case of Craig, um, and his site, Just Inform Talk, I mean, he had like half a million or more followers. So they're a, a useful inflection point. So he, he would be someone who might call me up and be like, "W- what do you think about this? Like, why are they telling me this? You know, what's, yeah, what's their motive? Should I, should I tell this to my audience?" I'd be like... (laughs) It didn't really matter what I said, he usually just ended up telling it to his audience. But I, you know, I would, I would try to talk him through it.

Joe Rogan 27:37 Did you try to get a hold of General Kelly?

Cullen Hoback 27:39 I did not, I did not. The, the only general that I spoke to, and it didn't, he didn't end up making an appearance in the series, uh, just because I wanted to keep the series focused primarily on the investigation into who was behind it, um, was General Hayden.

Joe Rogan 27:55 The Kelly one is interesting because when he's standing outside in front of his house with his family, he's like, "Where we go one, we go all." And they're reading the whole speech, the QAnon's speech.

Cullen Hoback 28:03 Oh, General Flynn.

Joe Rogan 28:04 I'm sorry.

Cullen Hoback 28:04 General Flynn.

Joe Rogan 28:05 I said Kelly, sorry. Flynn. That, that was... So did you talk to him?

Cullen Hoback 28:09 So I had tried, I had tried to get a hold of General Flynn and to do an interview with him. Uh, of course I would have. Uh, he was, he was going through some legal troubles at the time. Um, so he was not making as many public statements. He was not really giving interviews. So what you saw was his family, you know, Joe Flynn, um, Barbara Redgate, I think was her name, um, some of these characters who were in his orbit, family members who were kind of speaking on his behalf. Meanwhile, though, General Flynn, um, was messaging QTubers behind the scenes bolstering this. And you gotta, you gotta... He had like five million dollars in legal bills or some crazy amount of money that he had to spend in his legal bills. So, uh, he needed all the support he could get. And I, I had talked to, um, some individuals who had helped him in his fundraising efforts from nearly the, the beginning at one of these Q conventions. You know, and they said internally within the family, there was debate as to whether or not QAnon was helpful or harmful. Um, but ultimately they, they all gravitated towards it.

Joe Rogan 29:16 So do you think he was using it just as a fundraising thing? Like he was attaching himself to that because he knew that they would support his, uh, legal defense-

Cullen Hoback 29:25 I-

Joe Rogan 29:25 ... cynically?

Cullen Hoback 29:26 I, I (laughs) I mean, I, I do think that that's, that's a part of it, right?

Joe Rogan 29:29 Hmm.

Cullen Hoback 29:29 You have, you have an incredibly passionate base-

Joe Rogan 29:32 Right.

Cullen Hoback 29:32 ... who are, who, who see... Most of them believe that Flynn was Q, right? That was the predominant theory among QAnons.

Joe Rogan 29:40 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 29:41 Um, because Q was, uh, because Flynn was so central to the Q narrative. You know, he was, he was the, he was a good guy in that narrative who, uh, who warranted their support and was kind of, you know, working against the cabal. So you ask most QAnons and Flynn would be very high on their list of suspects for who might be behind it. Um, and it would not be until the last year in the approach to the election that Flynn would openly embrace it, doing what I think you were describing where he, you know, raised his hand with his family-

Joe Rogan 30:11 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 30:11 ... on the 4th of July and they all take the, the Q oath. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:16 Whoa. Yeah, that was wild to see an actual general do that.

Cullen Hoback 30:22 And then you saw all of the QAnons doing the same thing, so then they went on YouTube and started taking, you know-

Joe Rogan 30:28 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 30:28 ... taking the same kind of oath. You saw how, you saw how much power he had really generated vis-a-vis QAnon. What's even more wild though is that in Japan there is a huge-... crowd that supports Flynn there. So there's, like, Q Army Flynn Japan. And there's over-

Joe Rogan 30:51 No.

Cullen Hoback 30:51 ... like, 100,000 people in Japan who are, like, giant Flynn supporters. There's a, like a, it's almost like a religious offshoot, uh, in Japan. There's sort of two different, two different big primary segments there of QAnon. Uh, but one of the biggest ones, um, is, is really centered around, centered around Flynn. Um, and, uh, that, that's always shocked me. I mean, imagine if there was, like, a general in Japan who had a big following in the States (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 31:18 Yeah, right?

Cullen Hoback 31:18 They, he managed to do that through 4chan or 8chan or 8kun or whatever.

Joe Rogan 31:22 Well, that was another aspect that I thought was odd is that how people in other countries, like the guy from South Africa, are so into American politics.

Cullen Hoback 31:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:31 Like, he ... I, I ... It's hard to try to get their perspective. Like, I would, I would imagine that it's just very different being there and looking at us. Like, I think America is such a bizarre anomaly in that-

Cullen Hoback 31:46 But America has so much influence on-

Joe Rogan 31:48 Yes.

Cullen Hoback 31:48 ... world policy that if you wanna influence world policy, you influence America.

Joe Rogan 31:53 But it's so ... I mean, it is really unusual that we don't ... We barely know who the fuck the Prime Minister of Canada is.

Cullen Hoback 32:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:02 You know? Right? We know very little about-

Cullen Hoback 32:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:04 ... Canadian politics.

Cullen Hoback 32:05 Yeah, that's true.

Joe Rogan 32:06 We know Trudeau, right? Handsome guy, see him on TV, a lot of Canadians hate him. That's what we know.

Cullen Hoback 32:11 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:11 You know? I mean, we, we really don't know anything about all the other people. We knew about that guy ... What was his name? The, the one who was the mayor of Toronto who was out as fu- ... Ford.

Cullen Hoback 32:21 Oh, gosh.

Joe Rogan 32:21 Remember that guy?

Cullen Hoback 32:22 I, I do remember him.

Joe Rogan 32:23 He was doing coke and-

Cullen Hoback 32:23 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:24 He was crazy.

Cullen Hoback 32:24 Yeah, it just requires a big-

Joe Rogan 32:26 Yeah, he was flashy.

Cullen Hoback 32:26 ... splashy story, you know?

Joe Rogan 32:27 Yeah, it's ... You gotta be in the tabloids.

Cullen Hoback 32:28 Like black face or something that, uh, draws them out.

Joe Rogan 32:29 Yeah, something, something big has to happen. But that guy in South Africa was fully invested in American politics.

Cullen Hoback 32:37 Oh, I mean-

Joe Rogan 32:38 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 32:38 Living and breathing in it.

Joe Rogan 32:39 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 32:39 And a huge conspiracy theorist too.

Joe Rogan 32:41 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 32:41 And he ... I mean, he's also my sort of prime suspect for the original Q.

Joe Rogan 32:46 Really?

Cullen Hoback 32:46 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:47 Interesting.

Cullen Hoback 32:48 I mean, I don't say it in the series because I couldn't prove it definitively and-

Joe Rogan 32:51 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 32:52 ... I didn't wanna, I didn't wanna ... There are ... It, it is possible that there are ... I have sort of two other theories for who may have started it, but he's the, he's the predominant one.

Joe Rogan 33:02 Well, he was so adamant that the second Q wasn't Q. And I was like, "Hmm, how does he know that?" Like, why does he think that? Why is he so convinced? I mean, if he doesn't have access to, like, raw, like, some, some data points, if he doesn't have access to, like, whatever it is, like, the, the location or something, the ISP, like, what ... The IP address rather, like, what, what is, what's his reasoning for saying definitively to Ron Watkins, "You know that's not Q"?

Cullen Hoback 33:35 Right.

Joe Rogan 33:36 What was that?

Cullen Hoback 33:36 How does he know, right?

Joe Rogan 33:37 Right, how does he know?

Cullen Hoback 33:38 Like, how, how is he so sure?

Joe Rogan 33:39 Right.

Cullen Hoback 33:40 Just based on a couple of posts, bas- you know, style, that suddenly Q is posting from a static IP as opposed to a, a, a dynamic or changing IP.

Joe Rogan 33:49 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 33:49 Um, yeah, how, how could he be so sure just based on that? I mean, there's a lot of reasons to think that, that Paul would have been running it up until that point, and there's a lot of reasons to think why Code Monkey or /ron Watkins would've taken it from him at that point. I mean, he was posing a real threat to the, you know, quote-unquote "operation".

Joe Rogan 34:10 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 34:10 Um, he, he had just appeared on Alex Jones. So this is late December 2017. Q's been actively posting for about two months at this point.

Joe Rogan 34:19 Who had just appeared on Alex Jones? Ron?

Cullen Hoback 34:21 So Ron did not appear anywhere, you know. The first recorded interview that I know of that he gave was with me-

Joe Rogan 34:28 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 34:28 ... you know, a year and a half or so, or a year later. Um, the, uh, this is when Q kind of gets its first, uh ... I, I, I consider (laughs) Alex Jones to almost be mainstream. He has a big enough audience, right? You know, he ... It, it brings it out to a new bigger audience. It, it escapes the chans, um, through Alex Jones. And this happens in late December 2017.

Joe Rogan 34:50 So this is when-

Cullen Hoback 34:50 And Coleman Rogers and Paul Ferber both appear on his show.

Joe Rogan 34:53 This is when Alex Jones is not banned from social media either.

Cullen Hoback 34:56 Correct, yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:57 So it's much bigger reach.

Cullen Hoback 34:58 So he's still got a re- ... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:58 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 34:58 He's got a bigger reach at this point. Um, so Jerome Corsi, who had been talking about Q Drop, sort of famed conspiracy theorist responsible for the, or largely responsible for the whole Boothem- Birther Movement thing around Obama, um, Swift Boat with John Kerry. You know, he's, he's been doing this political operative stuff for years. He brings it to Alex Jones, and Alex Jones brings these two guys on his show late December. It's Paul Ferber and Coleman Rogers. Um, you know, Coleman Rogers would go on to start a 24-hour news channel devoted to Q. Paul Ferber, you know, was running the board that Q was posting on. And-

Joe Rogan 35:33 Which is very suspicious.

Cullen Hoback 35:35 Very suspicious, you know. For some reason, Q leaves 4chan in late November 2017 and jumps over to, to ... Chooses Paul Ferber's board on 8chan for some reason, you know? Like (laughs) why ... There were many pla- ... Why didn't Q create its own board? Why didn't Q ... Why, why that board? All right.

Joe Rogan 35:52 And was he on Paul Ferber's board on 4chan? Did Paul Ferber have a board on-

Cullen Hoback 35:57 No. So, um, you know, Q was largely posting on Pol on 4chan, so they didn't have control. There was not-

Joe Rogan 36:04 And Pol is a politics?

Cullen Hoback 36:05 Yeah, it's, like, in politically incorrect.

Joe Rogan 36:07 Is it P-O-L?

Cullen Hoback 36:07 P-O-L, yeah, yeah. And, and that's where ... U- usually Pol on 4chan or 8chan is where you see the, the most racy, kind of anti-Semitic, White supremacist stuff if you're gonna see that. It's there. And you can never really tell when you're on that, that board if people are being ironic or post-ironic.

Joe Rogan 36:24 Shit posting.

Cullen Hoback 36:24 Or shit posting, yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:25 Right.

Cullen Hoback 36:25 You can't really tell. But anyway, that's, that's it, you know. That's the board that when these chan- when the chans get reported on, usually they're, they're pulling screenshots from that. So Q was posting there and, and people on 4chan were like, "This is a fucking LARP. Stop it." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 36:39 What is the first post?

Cullen Hoback 36:41 They were, they were ... They didn't like Q very much.

Joe Rogan 36:43 They thought it was bullshit?

Cullen Hoback 36:44 They thought it was bullshit, yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:45 Interesting.

Cullen Hoback 36:45 And in fact, actually, um-I, I brought a, a chart, but you can actually see that, um, Q was ... The amount of times that people were calling Q a LARP on 4Chan was increasing, um, almost (laughs) exponentially at the very end, uh, up until, uh, Q decides, "I'm, I'm outta here." You can see, um, and then that, right at the end there, that's when Q jumps ship and goes to, goes over to 8Chan. Now, they would also say that, um, you know, Q had been banned on 4Chan, and that w- also motivated the leap, but I do think that it's interesting that, uh-

Joe Rogan 37:20 Was it banned on 4Chan?

Cullen Hoback 37:21 So, y- uh, my understanding is that the Trip code itself, like, Q was no longer able to post using, I think, using the Trip on, on, on 4Chan.

Joe Rogan 37:29 The Trip code, explain that and how that's a-

Cullen Hoback 37:31 On whole. So, it's, it's just a cryptographic function that allows someone to type in a password, um, a simple password. It, it's eight characters long, um, and they will produce a code, and that's called a Trip code. And this is a way of anonymous or pseudo-anonymously kind of identifying yourself. So, if I have the password, Q's password, eight character or so password, type it in, boop, boop, boop, it's gonna produce a code, and that code will appear on every post, um, that the password is entered for. So, this is how people knew that Q was posting. And in fact, the first 127 posts didn't have a Trip code, so there was no way to even know who Q was in the beginning, right? They, in fact, the ANONS had to go back and review all the, the old posts just to see, like, "Okay, which ones were Q? Which ones weren't?" So, like, the first 127 drops, like, anybody could've been coming in, like, LARPing as Q, sorta jumping in, trying to write in the style.

Joe Rogan 38:28 Anyone?

Cullen Hoback 38:28 And the idea of Q hadn't even been established yet. I mean, Q itself, uh, yeah, anybody, any asshole on, (laughs) on-

Joe Rogan 38:34 Like you? You could've done it?

Cullen Hoback 38:35 Yeah, of course.

Joe Rogan 38:36 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 38:36 Yeah, you could've done it. Anybody could've done it.

Joe Rogan 38:38 Interesting.

Cullen Hoback 38:38 Paul Ferber could've been there doing it sometimes, but someone else could jump in, you know, kind of put on the hat.

Joe Rogan 38:43 I'm confused. I'm confused.

Cullen Hoback 38:43 And lots of people were trying to do that in the beginning.

Joe Rogan 38:45 Um, uh, uh, so, like, when you post there, it, you don't have, like, a screen name?

Cullen Hoback 38:51 No, there's no login, so anybody can post without having to log in. That's, that's the sort of, that's what makes the Chans really unique. There's also no algorithms on the Chans. But it's, it's if you're using a VPN, which I, uh, 4Chan makes that very difficult, 8Chan less so, um, or 8kun now, uh, i- if you go there and you, you know, you wanna just shit post and you don't wanna have it traced back to you, you can do that. So, that's why people, you know, it gives them this true sense of anonymity-

Joe Rogan 39:21 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 39:21 ... without having, you know, all of their posts be logged and associated with their IP.

Joe Rogan 39:25 But how does that establish a community, though? 'Cause, like, when people d- do, have, like, whether it's on Twitter or whatever, people g- uh, find people based on their screen names.

Cullen Hoback 39:35 Well, it's more of a culture.

Joe Rogan 39:37 Hmm.

Cullen Hoback 39:37 And I think that those who are heavy Chan users would, would, um, they would, they would ... The, the term is "fame fagging." That's what they would say, um, where people use a name like Q, um, to, uh, you know, to, to bring more, uh, notoriety.

Joe Rogan 39:56 Hmm.

Cullen Hoback 39:56 You know, they want th- in their minds, like, the, the best ideas rise to the top.

Joe Rogan 40:00 Right.

Cullen Hoback 40:00 So, uh, they don't want to, um ... They don't want to have, they don't wanna give ... They don't wanna have the, I guess the power that's associated with identity.

Joe Rogan 40:12 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 40:13 And that's part of why they were so annoyed when Coleman Rogers and Paul Ferber went on The Alex Jones Show, because they were, you know, d- doing what Chan users would call "fame fagging" at that point. So ...

Joe Rogan 40:24 Interesting.

Cullen Hoback 40:25 And that's a term they love to throw around on the Chans heavily.

Joe Rogan 40:28 S- so, if you had a screen name-

Cullen Hoback 40:30 And Q was doing that too, so Q, by using a Trip code, would've, would've been, um, you know, that, that term, I think they threw out. But, uh, it's, um ... When Q started posting, Q was not known as Q at the time. Q was just a random ANON writing stuff, and it wasn't until-

Joe Rogan 40:49 But there, there was no Q at the end of it or anything?

Cullen Hoback 40:51 No, there was nothing. There was no Q at all in the beginning, so that was, that concept wasn't even developed yet. And it was not until drop, I believe, is it 20, 30 ... It was like-

Joe Rogan 41:04 Hmm.

Cullen Hoback 41:04 I have, I have it, uh, maybe I brought it with me, but it's, like, drop th- Let me look this up. I don't wanna get it wrong. Drop, uh, tw- 34. Um, at drop 34, that's the first time we see "Q Clarence Patriot." Um, and so, you know, some ANON just signs off "Q Clarence Patriot," and the LARP kinda continues. And so it, it's almost like an improv game, where, where people are jumping in. They're like, "Oh, what's the story that we're developing? Let me try to add something new to the story." You know, drop, um ... It, it's not until drop 61 that you see, um, the idea of Q, signing off as a Q. So, the first, you know, 60 or so drops, it was, that's, that's not even a thing.

Joe Rogan 41:52 Hmm.

Cullen Hoback 41:52 And it's not until drop 128 that Q, uh, signs off, um, using a Trip code. So, at that point, one individual locked it down with a password and then started, you know, writing from there. So, it's possible that that password could've been shared between multiple people. You know, that was the, the story that Q told, um, that, uh, you know, that there was, uh, uh, a, a whole kind of, like, less than 10 people who had, who had, knew the full truth about Q, right? And this was about, something I'd hear from a lot of QAnons. Um, so yeah, you, you, uh ...N- but most likely, if you, if you were just a, you know, old school troll on, on 4Chan or 8Chan, you would just want it all to yourself. Are you really gonna share the password with other people? Because someone else could easily just change the trip code and lock you out. Um, so-

Joe Rogan 42:47 And they could also reveal that the two of you were in on this together, if you have a falling out.

Cullen Hoback 42:52 Yeah, and we haven't seen that happen. Nobody has come forth and been like, "Okay, actually, here's what was going on behind the scenes."

Joe Rogan 42:58 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 42:58 You would expect there to be some kind of a leak, um, around, around all of this. And you asked about the community thing. You know, that term I used before, there's, there's tons of terms like that and just... And a culture that exists on 4Chan and 8Chan that is very abrasive and is designed to keep normies out.

Joe Rogan 43:17 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 43:17 And they try to keep normies out. They, they want to be as edgy as possible. You know, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's a game of being most... Who can be the most provocative, in a lot of instances. Um, so that, that's largely what drives those communities, and people will have friends on there and they'll become friends through Discord channels and stuff like that. Um, and s- y- sometimes you can have a handle, like Code Monkey has a handle, right? People know him as Code Monkey. But the thing about being anonymous is anyone can LARP as you.

Joe Rogan 43:47 Right.

Cullen Hoback 43:48 How do you know if you're talking to the same person or not?

Joe Rogan 43:50 That is crazy, right? So anybody can jump in and pretend to be Code Monkey.

Cullen Hoback 43:54 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:54 Yeah, that's a, a fascinating aspect of this whole thing is that-

Cullen Hoback 43:58 In his case, he has his own trip code, and his trip code produces Ode Monkey.

Joe Rogan 44:02 Ah, okay.

Cullen Hoback 44:04 Uh-huh. Yeah, but it's actually pretty easy to hack a trip code.

Joe Rogan 44:06 You were with them for how long when you were doing this documentary series?

Cullen Hoback 44:13 Um, I was with them... I mean, we were filming on and off for about three years.

Joe Rogan 44:18 Over the course of that time, like, Ron's story evolves, or e- either he forgets what he told you initially, or he forgets the way he was sort of describing Q and his idea of politics and what he feels about politics. And towards the end, he's saying e- essentially he's been educating normies on how to do politics. And you're like, "Hey, what the fuck?"

Cullen Hoback 44:45 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:46 Like, "What is this?" Like... But along the way, like, the part of the, the thing was analyzing the difference between the original Q and then the Q once it goes to 8Chan, right?

Cullen Hoback 44:58 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:58 Like, there's a different-

Cullen Hoback 45:00 So-

Joe Rogan 45:00 ... style of communication.

Cullen Hoback 45:01 Yeah, yeah. I mean, so the two points there. So, eh, when we get to the end, we can go into all the reasons that Ron is Q. Um, but if we're just talking about the early days, because I get a lot of people asking me, "Okay, well, who was the original Q?" Um, what you were, what you were describing, uh, that style shift, that's a huge indicator, A, that there was only one person writing at one point and then another person writing at the next, and B, it tells us when the shift might have happened. So, you know, that shift that's most detectable is somewhere between the jump from 4Chan to 8Chan and th- the mo- a little bit after when Paul loses control of the board and believes that Q has become fake.

Joe Rogan 45:45 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 45:45 Um, and, uh, and that's... You know, Q starts posting really, you know, obvious doctored photos. There's, um, you know, punctuation changes. You know, you can see that it's someone who's trying to emulate.

Joe Rogan 46:01 Punctuation changes?

Cullen Hoback 46:03 Yeah, like way more exclamation marks, you know?

Joe Rogan 46:05 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 46:05 (laughs) Like, just... A- and stuff. Eh, to be clear, it's this kind of punctuation I've seen Ron use on his Telegram feed-

Joe Rogan 46:12 Hmm.

Cullen Hoback 46:13 ... ex- extensively since, since, uh, you know-

Joe Rogan 46:16 Uh-huh.

Cullen Hoback 46:16 ... he was booted from-

Joe Rogan 46:17 Is-

Cullen Hoback 46:17 ... Twitter in January.

Joe Rogan 46:18 Is he leaning into it?

Cullen Hoback 46:21 Wha- Well, so I... After the series concluded, you know, Ron, Ron messaged me, um, and that was the first time he had seen it. He was watching it alongside everybody else, and he messaged me and he said, "Cullen, you know, I identify more with villains." Um, he said something to the effect of, um, "I learned a long time ago that you have to make internet personalities larger than life because it makes for a more entertaining existence. Um, I'm not Q, but I may as well lean into it." So he's alwa- He has to ke- continue to deny Q, being Q, I think, um, in his mind for whatever liability might come with that. You know, he's, he's always... He has... It's like he comes as close to admitting it without, without, you know-

Joe Rogan 47:14 Yeah, there's that moment-

Cullen Hoback 47:15 ... fully, you know, without, without getting rid of the plausible deniability. Um, just... And I think he also assumes that all of our communications are being monitored. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:25 Right.

Cullen Hoback 47:25 So, uh, which they probably are, but-

Joe Rogan 47:27 I'm sure they are.

Cullen Hoback 47:28 Um- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:29 100%. There's that moment where y- you, you're both laughing, or he's laughing, where he talks about that, that he's been doing this 10 years anonymously, but, but he's not Q.

Cullen Hoback 47:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:43 And then, and then you laugh and then he laughs.

Cullen Hoback 47:45 But he breaks first.

Joe Rogan 47:46 Right. That's right.

Cullen Hoback 47:46 That's... And which is a huge tell as well.

Joe Rogan 47:48 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 47:48 Like, he realizes he just fucked up.

Joe Rogan 47:50 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 47:50 Like, he realizes he just slipped.

Joe Rogan 47:51 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 47:52 And, uh, you know, and, and I have, uh... Ron has some tells, you know, he'll clear his throat. Um, that's a big tell for when he's, when he's lying. Um... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 48:03 Hmm. Maybe.

Cullen Hoback 48:03 But, I mean, that was, uh, that was after three, you know, three years of this kind of cat and mouse thing. And he had always denied being a heavy, being really involved in the boards at all. Um, you know, he would kind of pretend not to know certain things about Q. Um, eh, so this was a big, a big shift for him to come out and say, "Yeah, actually, like, I was leading digs on the boards," which is basically, um, finding and sort of and curating, um, the, the research or evolving theories or, um, you know. A- and this is what happens on /pol/, it's what happens on Q Research, is that they're going out and collecting whatever stuff they find on the internet and then... And, um, and saying, "Okay, you know, it...... something about Huma Abedin or something about, um, you know, nuclear subs. You might just get this sort of l- lengthy list. And those are the digs, and then they keep getting kind of recycled. And so, what Q would really do is just look at all of that research, you know, kind of pick the, the best, you know, the, the most spicy stuff, ask a question about it or reference it in some way, shape, or form. And then it would make those who were on those sites feel like they were part of the game, and they'd go-

Joe Rogan 49:19 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 49:19 ... "Oh, we're onto something," you know? Uh, "This insider is, is, is looping us in." So, to be Q, you didn't need to be a secret government insider. You just needed to know what the anons were already thinking.

Joe Rogan 49:29 Hmm.

Cullen Hoback 49:29 You needed to understand that culture, and you needed to spend a lot of time on the boards. You needed to kind of be, you know, a, a, uh, well, I was going to say a king of those boards, but just an edge lord to pull it off.

Joe Rogan 49:40 An edge lord? That's hilarious. That's what's interesting, right? It's like, you could not be a, a deep government agent and, uh, some, some person who was in the White House who had massive responsibilities, who was side by side with the President, and have the knowledge of that community. Really almost wouldn't be possible.

Cullen Hoback 50:02 No. And, and, you would be potentially criminally liable.

Joe Rogan 50:07 Right. Like, if they went into your White House laptop and they go, "Hey, motherfucker, what are you doing on 8chan?" Like, "What do you... (laughs) What's up with all these frogs with Hitler armbands?"

Cullen Hoback 50:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:16 You know? Like... (laughs)

Cullen Hoback 50:18 It was... (laughs) Like, guys, if you think-

Joe Rogan 50:20 You know?

Cullen Hoback 50:20 ... it was, if you think it's really General Flynn, like-

Joe Rogan 50:23 Right.

Cullen Hoback 50:23 ... do you think he would tell you?

Joe Rogan 50:24 Right.

Cullen Hoback 50:24 D- do you think, or do you think he would at least have, like, layers of, layers and layers between that? Like, he, the only reason he would lean into it is because he, it, it, it, it can't come back to haunt him in that, i- in the way, in that same way. And someone like Ron, you know, d- is what Q did illegal? Um, that's a big question.

Joe Rogan 50:42 Right. Is it incitement?

Cullen Hoback 50:44 Um, th- that's a, that's a tough thing to prove.

Joe Rogan 50:47 Right.

Cullen Hoback 50:48 But, uh, you know, Q, pretending to be, uh, a, a government insider, or, uh, have with Q-level clearance, well, what, who, who, who were you pretending to be, right?

Joe Rogan 50:58 Well, you're, not only that, you're doing it, again, on a website-

Cullen Hoback 51:01 You could always call it satire.

Joe Rogan 51:01 ... that has a lot of frogs with swastikas.

Cullen Hoback 51:04 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:05 You know? Like, what, wh- are we supposed to believe that's real? But at a certain point in time, it becomes very clear that there's a massive movement behind this. Like, literally millions of people believe this, and they don't, some of them don't even go to those websites, correct? Like, there's individual websites that collect all of the drops, right?

Cullen Hoback 51:26 Oh, sure, yeah. I mean, most, most, um, most of those who were following Q were not actually engaging with the site where Q was, Q was posting. Um, that, I would say that is-

Joe Rogan 51:39 Most?

Cullen Hoback 51:40 Yeah, the, the vast majority-

Joe Rogan 51:41 So what happens?

Cullen Hoback 51:41 ... had never actually really been to, been to 8chan. And you, you see that moment in the (laughs) , in the series, right? I talked to Liz Croken, you know, who, who was a gossip columnist for The Tribune once upon a time. Um, I think, uh, she either wrote for, like, The Star or The Enquirer, one of those rags as well. But, um, you know, she's like, "There's, you know, child porn on those sites? Well, that's news to me."

Joe Rogan 52:05 Right.

Cullen Hoback 52:05 (laughs) You know? It's like, well, it gets deleted because 8chan moderates just like every social media company has to moderate. Um, you know, they, I think they moderate sort of to the, the absolute limit. Um, you know, but, uh, (laughs) yeah, I mean, sh- she also didn't w- uh, didn't want to engage with that material. It's an uncomfortable place to be for a lot of people.

Joe Rogan 52:27 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 52:28 So, that's part of why in the series I wanted to say, well, look, you need to under- in order to understand Q, you have to understand the entire mentality of the world from which Q is born. And in fact, the person who is the architect, I believe, behind all of this, and I think we proved to be (laughs) the architect behind all of this, is, um, you know, an edge lord of that space. It's the exact kind of person who would run that kind of campaign. And I don't think for a second, like, no one can, could sit back and be like, "I'm going to create this massive global movement-"

Joe Rogan 52:57 Right.

Cullen Hoback 52:57 "... and be successful." It's just, this is the one that kind of stuck. I mean, there have been other LARPs in the past, you know, other people who have kind of come out and been these, these secret anons. I mean, before Q, there were a couple of other prototypes. I didn't mention this in the series, but, you know, there was, like, an FBI anon, I think a CIA anon, um, a mega anon, and-

Joe Rogan 53:18 Mega or MAGA?

Cullen Hoback 53:19 Mega (laughs) , mega anon.

Joe Rogan 53:21 What's mega anon?

Cullen Hoback 53:21 Uh, this is just, like, a, a, someone, in that case, it was supposed to be kind of like someone who had a good insight to Washington, DC politics and had good sources and was, was writing on the, writing on the chans and was supposed to be female. Um, and, uh, and yeah, this, this had happened kind of in the year running up to Q and, and, and tailed off at the beginning of 2018, this, this other kind of, uh, heightened anon. But you can go all the way back to the early 2000s with Art Bell and Coast to Coast. You know, there was, uh, there was somebody who pretended to be a time traveler from the future who was trying to prevent World War III, John Titor.

Joe Rogan 53:59 Oh, yeah, I remember that. Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 54:00 Tons of people got into it. Were you into it?

Joe Rogan 54:02 No. No.

Cullen Hoback 54:03 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:03 But that was a fascinating one, the, the time traveler one. I had a comedian send me this like he was serious about it. I'm like, "Dude, I think this guy's for real." I'm like, "Do, do I have to change my number?"

Cullen Hoback 54:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:14 "I think there's a fucking time traveler." But this, uh, th- this Q, 8chan thing, what's fascinating to me is, how many members does 8chan have, or how many users does 8chan have?

Cullen Hoback 54:27 Um, y- uh, there are a lot of... There's what Ron would say and then there's probably what the, the sort of truth is. We did some analytics of the, of the traffic, um, you know, and it, it, it certainly, uh...... uh, went way up thanks to Q. Um-

Joe Rogan 54:44 Hmm.

Cullen Hoback 54:44 ... way more, way more users, uh, until Q had become the predominant, um, reason that people were visiting 8chan-

Joe Rogan 54:53 Oh.

Cullen Hoback 54:53 ... and 8kun. You know, so we're talking it looked like over two million, you know, were actively engaging there during sort of the peak of Q. It might have been higher than that. Before, it was a little difficult because they got wiped from the web and a lot of the data around, um, you know, usage got wiped as well. Um, you know, when Q was really booming, uh, right after, um, the Epstein incident, uh, you know, that, um-

Joe Rogan 55:18 This is after Epstein's death?

Cullen Hoback 55:19 Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and then there was another shooting and then that, that, uh, as you see, in the series kind of triggers a series of events that causes 8chan to get pulled from the web. But-

Joe Rogan 55:31 The New Zealand shooting?

Cullen Hoback 55:32 So, um, which one actually took them-

Joe Rogan 55:36 That's the Christchurch Facebook-

Cullen Hoback 55:37 It might have been Poway at that point. No. So Poway was in April and then there was-

Joe Rogan 55:42 Po- what is Poway? Which one is that?

Cullen Hoback 55:42 Poway was another, it was a synagogue shooting. So there was, there was, um, Christchurch and then there was Poway, uh, and then there was another shooting that took place, um, in El Paso in, uh, in August. Uh, there's so many shootings, I can't even keep track of all of them. Uh, in ... which is its own story, I guess.

Joe Rogan 56:04 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 56:04 But, uh, you know, in, in 20, uh, 2019, um, and that, it was the third one that, that became the point that there was a lot of public outcry, largely led by Fred Brandon, um, their opposition, uh, to, to, to wipe the site from the web. And I think the assumption was that, um, people were being radicalized on 8chan, that they were, um, you know, being exposed to dangerous ideas and that this is what was leading them to these, to these shootings. Um, one of the things I, I, I tried to point out actually in the series was that that's, that's kind of a, um, a misguided assumption. You know, I think that we can look specifically at the New Zealand shooter, right? Um, lots of headlines were saying that the New Zealand shooter, um, had, had, had done so because they were radicalized on 8chan. But they had, um, they, like, I think they visited the Baltics, they donated to white supremacist organizations and, um, they had e- even in their own testimony said that they'd been radicalized on YouTube. That, that it was, like, the YouTube algorithms that had drawn them to a lot of this material once upon a time, years earlier. Um, and so I think that's yet another example where you say, "Okay, well algorithms are driving people, you know, in, in a certain direction." We can have a conversation about, you know, what kind of seat belts you might want to put on algorithms, but, um, you know, and 8chan doesn't have any, so, um, so it was, it was interesting that it was almost like the big tech was passing the buck that 8chan was the low-hanging fruit and it's like you get rid of 8chan, you've solved the problem, right? And, like, in reality, something like Q wouldn't have been successful if it wasn't for big tech. It was, these chan- chans are old, man. They've been around for decades.

Joe Rogan 57:52 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 57:53 Um, and Q just escaped the chans and it escaped the chans thanks to (laughs) algorithms and, um, and, and, you know, people who were susceptible, uh, to a narrative that they wanted to believe was true, um, wanted to be a part of something. I mean, you use the word misfits a- a lot and-

Joe Rogan 58:12 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 58:13 ... I think that that seems applicable in a- in a lot of cases. You know, they're, they're LARPing. You know?

Joe Rogan 58:19 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 58:19 Like, I made a film about LARPers in 2008 (laughs) back-

Joe Rogan 58:22 Did you? What was it?

Cullen Hoback 58:22 Yeah. It's called Monster Camp. Very DIY-

Joe Rogan 58:25 Monster Camp.

Cullen Hoback 58:25 ... little film, but yeah, it was back before people really knew what LARPing even was. You know, and I, I saw some parallels here, uh, of people who, who don't have a lot of, you know, sort of close friends in their, in their lives-

Joe Rogan 58:37 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 58:37 ... and are, and are looking for meaning and, and, um, and want to f- I guess, you know, kind of want to feel special-

Joe Rogan 58:44 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 58:45 ... and, uh, and I think what you see actually over the course of the series, and this is why we structured it this way, I mean, Q did really kind of start as a, as a sort of interactive game that took on a life of its own and it, and it, and it grew really rapidly until these, this, this, you can call Q a meme, um, until it memed itself into reality. Until, until someone like Ron Watkins was advising President Trump near the end of, of Q and near the end of his term. You know, me-

Joe Rogan 59:17 Was he really?

Cullen Hoback 59:18 Yeah. I mean, I- I can't, I don't haven't interviewed Trump on this, (laughs) but I, I mean, I do know that he was communicating, you know, th- with Giuliani and he was advising them on, on what to do in relationship to the election.

Joe Rogan 59:31 How the fuck does that happen?

Cullen Hoback 59:33 Trump was retweeting him.

Joe Rogan 59:35 Right. But how does Ron Watkins get ahold of Giuliani? How is he... What ... Why is he taking any advice from him?

Cullen Hoback 59:45 He was ... they, uh ... I asked Ron the same question. You know, he's-

Joe Rogan 59:50 This is true?

Cullen Hoback 59:51 ... option of last resort. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:52 But this is 100% true?

Cullen Hoback 59:53 I mean, I have not talked to Giuliani, but you can, you can see in the data trail, you can see him ... Yeah. You can, you can see that Ron was, was openly, was openly advising them on, on what to do in relationship to the election. He has been-

Joe Rogan 1:00:08 That's stunning.

Cullen Hoback 1:00:09 ... an advisor ever since.

Joe Rogan 1:00:10 Still?

Cullen Hoback 1:00:10 It blew my mind.

Joe Rogan 1:00:11 Still right now?

Cullen Hoback 1:00:12 Yeah. He's like ... I mean, he was deeply involved with all the stuff with Lindell. You know, he was, he was-

Joe Rogan 1:00:17 Lindell?

Cullen Hoback 1:00:18 Um, Mike Lindell.

Joe Rogan 1:00:20 What is-

Cullen Hoback 1:00:20 You know, the whole symposium, the-

Joe Rogan 1:00:22 iPillow guy?

Cullen Hoback 1:00:22 Yeah, like the... iPillow guy. Yeah, MyPillow.

Joe Rogan 1:00:24 Oh, oh, the MyPillow guy.

Cullen Hoback 1:00:25 MyPillow.

Joe Rogan 1:00:25 That guy. I, I shut that guy off as soon as I hear him talking.

Cullen Hoback 1:00:29 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:29 (laughs) I don't ... (laughs)

Cullen Hoback 1:00:29 You know, um, the, the audit, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:00:32 (clears throat) Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 1:00:32 ... the audit in Arizona. Ron's been advising on that.

Joe Rogan 1:00:35 Really?

Cullen Hoback 1:00:36 Yeah. Yeah. He's been really-

Joe Rogan 1:00:37 But did they watch your documentary?

Cullen Hoback 1:00:39 (laughs) I don't know. I don't know if they saw it.

Joe Rogan 1:00:40 If they watch your documentary, wouldn't they go like, "Hey, hey, what the fuck are we doing? Who are we talking to here?"

Cullen Hoback 1:00:45 Yeah, I mean, I don't, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:00:47 It's wild.

Cullen Hoback 1:00:47 I'm not, I'm not sure they all, I'm not sure they all saw it. Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:00:50 But that's wild.

Cullen Hoback 1:00:51 But he also still has a huge following and he was-

Joe Rogan 1:00:55 So where does he has a following now? Is he, is he kicked off of Twitter?

Cullen Hoback 1:00:57 Well, and you have to, well, all of this makes you wonder if they had a relation- if he had a relationship before he migrated from, uh, be- you know, Q shuts down, right at, on Election Day-

Joe Rogan 1:01:06 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 1:01:06 ... and then Ron starts actively really posting on Twitter. And all, and the fact that he was able to build such a massive following and quickly start advising on election fraud issues makes me wonder if they had a connection with the administration in some way, shape, or form before that. You know, Ron would often say while I was filming with him that it was a marketing campaign. Some would describe it, which is kind of a glib way of putting it-

Joe Rogan 1:01:29 That Q-

Cullen Hoback 1:01:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:29 ... was a marketing campaign?

Cullen Hoback 1:01:30 Yeah, that it would end at the election, you know. He-

Joe Rogan 1:01:32 Hmm.

Cullen Hoback 1:01:32 He and Jim would say, Jim Watkins, his father, would say that often. Um, you know, a glib way of putting it. But, uh, some might describe it as a PSYOP. Um, you know, and, and so it is... I consider it a, a p- a possibility, uh, especially since 8chan was a, uh, was, was directing a high amount of traffic to Donald Trump's website in the first election cycle, that, that, that a relationship had formed somewhere along the way. Maybe there were payments. I don't know. I can't... I haven't been able to prove that. But how does someone like Ron Watkins go from, you know, obscurity to suddenly being, you know, a, a, a celebrity, um, in those circles almost overnight?

Joe Rogan 1:02:17 Hmm.

Cullen Hoback 1:02:17 And to being the guy who's like, "Yeah, I'm reading a, you know, this election manual. Um, let me, let me give you some advice on, on how to do it." I mean, he said, he's like, "I must have just been the option of last resort."

Joe Rogan 1:02:28 Well, but here's the question. Why would they even... If he's not admitting he's Q, all he is is a guy who's running 8chan and then 8kun, why are they even communicating with him? Like, what... Out of all the human beings in the world, all of the political experts, all of the military experts, all of the, the people that are, you know, heads of whatever friendly media organizations that would communicate with him, why is he communicating with Ron?

Cullen Hoback 1:03:00 Well, I think Q became very useful to the Trump campaign in the last year.

Joe Rogan 1:03:04 So they knew that he was Q?

Cullen Hoback 1:03:06 Well, I don't know that. Um-

Joe Rogan 1:03:07 So, but why him then?

Cullen Hoback 1:03:09 But y- we do know that Jason Sullivan, who was Roger Stone's sort of head of social media, was using his algorithm hijacking tools on, on Twitter to amplify, to amplify Ron, and he was hoping to get a hold of, of Q.

Joe Rogan 1:03:23 Hmm.

Cullen Hoback 1:03:23 You know, it is, it is possible that there was, that, that something along those lines was happening behind the scenes there. Um, it may just be the case that Ron was able to leverage his position, um, and those relationships over time, because he was telling them what they wanted to hear. You know, he, ev- his lawyers, everybody's saying like, "What are we going to do about this?" And, and Ron's like, "I've got a plan." (laughs) Right?

Joe Rogan 1:03:49 Hmm.

Cullen Hoback 1:03:49 Um, and, uh... But it is, it, it, it blows my mind to this day. You know, I, I... My jaw dropped when I saw Ron appearing on OAN with his black hat on, you know, that we, you know, he, he bought when I was filming, a big black cowboy hat. (laughs) And, uh, and, uh, and suddenly he was the election expert. Um, and that suddenly he was advising these guys. Um, you know, that tells you, that tells you a lot. Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:04:22 OAN is so strange.

Cullen Hoback 1:04:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:25 Whenever I watch... There he is.

Cullen Hoback 1:04:26 There's, there he is, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:27 Cyber analyst on Dominion Voting. Shocking vulnerabilities. When, whenever I watch-

Cullen Hoback 1:04:32 And, and mind you, when he... So when he... When I spoke with him after he had been on the air with Chanelle Rihan on OAN, you know, he's like, "Well, Q actually did a drop while I was on OAN, so I can't be Q." It's like, you know, the more he tried to-

Joe Rogan 1:04:47 Hide it, yeah.

Cullen Hoback 1:04:47 ... make it seem like he wasn't Q, the more he made himself seem like he was, and he had gone through that massive, massive effort to make it seem like Bannon was Q, right?

Joe Rogan 1:04:56 Right.

Cullen Hoback 1:04:56 A huge effort. I mean, I even, I didn't believe it.

Joe Rogan 1:04:58 Explain, explain that to people who haven't seen it yet. First of all, go see it. Well, it's on HBO Max. Go, go, go watch it.

Cullen Hoback 1:05:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:05 Please. It's so good. But it's-

Cullen Hoback 1:05:06 Thanks for watching all six hours, two nights.

Joe Rogan 1:05:08 Yeah. I've... More than that. I watched six hours.

Cullen Hoback 1:05:10 Were you working out while you were watching it or were you...

Joe Rogan 1:05:12 Uh, some of the time I was-

Cullen Hoback 1:05:13 (laughs) Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:05:13 ... actually on the treadmill.

Cullen Hoback 1:05:14 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:05:14 Or, or the stairmill rather, watching and, you know, it kept me, uh, distracted. Um, but, uh, I watched it again last night. I watched a few of them last night. I watched two of them last night.

Cullen Hoback 1:05:24 Oh, wow.

Joe Rogan 1:05:25 The, uh... Because I just wanted to kind of refresh my brain. The, the thing that I was getting at initially is like-

Cullen Hoback 1:05:32 The Bannon thing?

Joe Rogan 1:05:33 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 1:05:33 Or were you gonna-

Joe Rogan 1:05:34 Well, let's, let's just do the Bannon thing and then I'll get to the thing I was getting at earlier-

Cullen Hoback 1:05:37 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:05:37 ... where I got distracted. The... So he sort of tried to... It was, it was very strange that he was doing that, that he was like outing Bannon, right?

Cullen Hoback 1:05:48 Super strange. Why would-

Joe Rogan 1:05:49 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 1:05:49 If Bannon was Q, why would you dox your most famous user?

Joe Rogan 1:05:52 Right, right. And he's using... He's saying that what he's using is IP addresses and that he's isolating it into a very specific location that is very near where Bannon's house is, right?

Cullen Hoback 1:06:04 Correct, yeah. So the, the very first time I met Ron, we shot an interview in the Philippines. You know, uh, I had gone there saying, you know, primarily it's going to... I'm interested in, in looking at free speech through the lens of Q. That's what I... You know, that was sort of the pretense. And at the end of my interview with him, um, he pulls me aside and he says, "You know, no one's really been looking at this, but I think Bannon is Q."... very first time-

Joe Rogan 1:06:34 Let's explain Bannon. Bann- Steve Bannon-

Cullen Hoback 1:06:36 Steve Bannon.

Joe Rogan 1:06:37 He's, uh, D- Donald Trump's advisor.

Cullen Hoback 1:06:39 Yeah. He was the, he was sort of the architect mastermind behind the 2016 campaign.

Joe Rogan 1:06:45 There's a lot of people who probably aren't paying attention to politics on this.

Cullen Hoback 1:06:48 Yeah, okay. (laughs) Yeah, so Steve Bannon-

Joe Rogan 1:06:49 So then ... Okay, so then-

Cullen Hoback 1:06:50 Yeah, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:06:50 Go ahead. So he pulls you aside.

Cullen Hoback 1:06:52 You know, um, who, who, who eventually kind of gets booted from Trump's inner circle, right before Q gets started.

Joe Rogan 1:06:58 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 1:06:58 So-

Joe Rogan 1:06:59 Now he's a podcaster.

Cullen Hoback 1:07:00 He's a podcaster, yeah. He's got his, like-

Joe Rogan 1:07:01 Hilarious.

Cullen Hoback 1:07:01 ... war room or whatever it is. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:07:03 Yeah, the war room.

Cullen Hoback 1:07:04 I don't know if Ron's appeared on it yet, but-

Joe Rogan 1:07:05 So this is the space room?

Cullen Hoback 1:07:06 This is a great room.

Joe Rogan 1:07:07 Thank you.

Cullen Hoback 1:07:08 Great room. Really, uh, I, I just want to, like, hover in here. I feel-

Joe Rogan 1:07:12 (laughs) .

Cullen Hoback 1:07:12 ... like we should be floating right now, sort of.

Joe Rogan 1:07:14 We can if you want to go there.

Cullen Hoback 1:07:17 (laughs) . Is there a time? Uh ...

Joe Rogan 1:07:20 (laughs) . There's always time.

Cullen Hoback 1:07:21 Yeah. (laughs) . Especially, uh, if you ... once you've started.

Joe Rogan 1:07:25 Yeah.

Cullen Hoback 1:07:25 Um, but, uh, yeah, so S- so-

Joe Rogan 1:07:28 So Steve Bannon.

Cullen Hoback 1:07:30 Um, so Ron pulls me aside and he's like, "Yeah, it's this guy, Steve Bannon." Um, no one's looked. And I, you know, I've got my, my absurd amount of research. You know, I've got an infinity board, thousands of assets, I've got timelines of all the possible suspects for Q at this point, you know, and Bannon was a prime suspect just based just sheerly on kind of the, the circumstances around him, like, and his character, you know, would ... You know, he knows the, he knows th- e- the trans, he knows that world, he knows how to, to co-opt it for political gain, so, you know, he, he makes for a, a possible suspect. I'm going, "Well, yeah, I'd been considering Bannon." Now why would Ron, the very first ... you know, first off, like, trolling journalists, and I don't consider myself a journalist, but trolling journalists is, like, the gold standard for trolls on the trans. Like, that's ... If you can get them to publish something fake, that's their dream, right?

Joe Rogan 1:08:20 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 1:08:20 So, like, I'm just thinking, "Okay, well, like, why is he telling me Bannon the very first time I meet him?" Fine. And I say, "Well, are y- can you show me some data associated with this?" He's like, "I'll get around to it." You know. Um, and, uh, you know, some, some time goes by, and I think, you know, six months later he could really tell that the heat was on him. "I, I, I have saw him. It's R- Ron, I think that's who it is." He's like, "Ah, I gotta, I gotta throw this guy off the, the trail." Um, he's like, "Okay, I've got the data. I've got the data that shows that it's Steve Bannon." You know, and you can see in the series, in episode, um, episode four, you know, he's like, "I've known it from the beginning. I've known it's Steve Bannon." So he said-

Joe Rogan 1:08:56 Can I stop you for a second?

Cullen Hoback 1:08:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:58 Why was the heat on Ron at that point?

Cullen Hoback 1:09:01 Um, well, all of the evidence pointed to him. You know, I had a massive list of, of evidence pointing to Ron.

Joe Rogan 1:09:08 And like, uh, for example?

Cullen Hoback 1:09:09 Oh, um, he would say ... Like, while I would be with him, he would say things that, uh, y- like, uh, "Q's gonna start going on the offense," um, as we're, like, coming down the mountain. And then during the interview he brought that up again, "Q's gonna start going on the offense." Two days later, Q writes, "Going on the offense." This is not something that Q does often. I mean, there was one more usage of the word offense in a- in, like, the thousands of drops that had occurred up until that point.

Joe Rogan 1:09:36 Hmm.

Cullen Hoback 1:09:36 Like, that's ... Okay, fine. One, that's one data point, right? But I have many, many more data points like that. And in fact, actually Ron o- after watching the series and he saw that scene ... I, I was gonna get around to this after the whole Bannon bit, but he ended up throwing his own right-hand man under the bus. He's like, "Well, I had this guy with me that day. He must've been taking notes and maybe he's Q. He must ... That, that's, that's how it must've ... Uh, that's the only way that could've happened." All right, fine. Like, you've, you've already convinced me of Bannon, but now let's try to ... let's, let's throw your right-hand guy under the bus. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:10:06 Hmm.

Cullen Hoback 1:10:06 But, um-

Joe Rogan 1:10:07 Interesting.

Cullen Hoback 1:10:08 Uh, e- uh, I mean all of ... First off, he would be able to access the trip code. It wouldn't be hard for him to easily hijack it at any point and time. Um, you know, he-

Joe Rogan 1:10:19 Could he fal- falsify IP data? Like, how is he getting you this data?

Cullen Hoback 1:10:23 Well, so the dataset that he presented, I believe he had been LARPing as Bannon for some time.

Joe Rogan 1:10:30 Oh, Jesus Christ. (laughs) .

Cullen Hoback 1:10:33 (laughs) . So he ... Yeah, he had put on the hat of Steve Bannon, I th-

Joe Rogan 1:10:37 Oh my God.

Cullen Hoback 1:10:37 ... I believe it's probably some time, and he was like, "Who's a likely suspect?" He'd done the same thing I did. He was like, "Who can I pin this on so it wouldn't be traced back to him?" And I think when we see that static IP, this is my best guess, um, you know, he ... what he ... what w- what you can do is set up a proxy server, you know, or you can just run it, run all your traffic through that one IP address. And so, um, from that point on, that IP address can also serve as a verification method.

Joe Rogan 1:11:04 And can you m- make that IP address appear to be in a very specific location?

Cullen Hoback 1:11:09 Yeah, yes.

Joe Rogan 1:11:09 Oh, okay.

Cullen Hoback 1:11:10 Yeah. So ... And Ron would know how to do that, right?

Joe Rogan 1:11:12 Right.

Cullen Hoback 1:11:12 So if ... and if what you want to do is ... A- a- and that would also make it so the, the trip code doesn't end up having to be the primary me- verification method, and those who run the boards, the admin, the ... obviously the admin, but the moderators and the board owner who can see a bit of the IP address can go, "Okay, like, even though Q has been hijacked," say, "the trip code's been hacked, well, it's a new IP address." So, um, Q could always use the, the static IP to fall back on as a verification method. Um, and this is what Paul was complaining about. He's like, "Okay, well suddenly Q is using this new IP." Now interestingly, Ron's right-hand man during one of these other interviews was like, "You ... let me show you. Ron was actually messaging me all the way back in early January of 2018 that he thinks it's Steve Bannon." So ... And then actually when this takeover, I think, took place, when, when the, um, um ... when Paul Furber, the previous board owner of Q says that it's a fake Q, some of the first things that get posted are in relationship to Steve Bannon. It's like a Steve Bannon article. So it really looks like right from that moment, someone, most likely Ron, was laying the pipe ...... um, to, uh, create a forensics dataset that pointed to Steve Bannon. And I think he was rather disappointed that nobody had picked up on it. You know?

Joe Rogan 1:12:37 Oh.

Cullen Hoback 1:12:37 And he was like, "Let me, let me show you." Eh, you know, it's so good, you know, we've even, we even, we even staged a whole thing where we sent someone out with cameras in front of Avenatti's office, you know, shared that stuff, you know, who lives like 20 minutes or so away from where Steve Bannon's house was. Um, you know, staged this whole thing so that there was a forensic trail that wasn't pointing in their direction.

Joe Rogan 1:12:57 Oh.

Cullen Hoback 1:12:57 And that's why it confused the hell out of me. I was like, "How ... You know, all this data would be such a pain in the ass to fake." Well, it wasn't that the data was fake, it was that the data was designed to look like a certain thing, because of course Ron would know how to do that. And I'm sure he was just like, "Ugh." He wanted better competition. He wanted somebody to see how smart he was.

Joe Rogan 1:13:16 God, how much time did you spend thinking about this?

Cullen Hoback 1:13:19 I mean, I-

Joe Rogan 1:13:20 (laughs)

Cullen Hoback 1:13:21 ... s- dude. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:13:22 (laughs)

Cullen Hoback 1:13:23 I spent the last few months just trying to, like-

Joe Rogan 1:13:25 Erase it?

Cullen Hoback 1:13:25 ... purge my brain (laughs) of it.

Joe Rogan 1:13:26 Jesus.

Cullen Hoback 1:13:26 I was like, "Oh, dammit, now I'm going on The Joe Rogan show, I'm gonna have to, like-

Joe Rogan 1:13:30 Re-amend it, remember it.

Cullen Hoback 1:13:31 ... re- re- re- uh, re-upload it all. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:33 God. So what I wanted to get to before is, um, when the initial Q drops and when all the stuff starts happening, how does it leak and become a mainstream thing? How does it get out? Like, what is, what's the m- is there a, a specific moment or is it just a slow sort of recognition by people who are conspiratorially minded that there's this gentleman or person or whatever that's posting pretending to be this Trump insider? Like, what is it that makes it become this huge thing? W- I don't remember when I started hearing about it, but I assume by the time stuff reaches me, it's leaked out into the mainstream.

Cullen Hoback 1:14:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:20 So what, what was the event?

Cullen Hoback 1:14:23 People started talking about this anonymous insider on the chans almost immediately. It was almost instantaneous. And I think that for those who were trying to get an edge on YouTube, you know, having this s- s-

Joe Rogan 1:14:38 Mm-hmm.

Cullen Hoback 1:14:38 ... being able to say like, "Oh, there's this secret government insider who's releasing drops and all of our dreams-"

Joe Rogan 1:14:43 Oh, I've seen this.

Cullen Hoback 1:14:43 "... are coming true." So you had, you had people like Tracy Beans, Jordan Sather, um, uh, eh, f- right from the start kind of being like, "Is this legit? Here's what they're saying." You know, and then, and then it kind of built from there. People are following them, um, s- start checking out, you know, the chans. Um, but it was still fairly contained. It was fairly contained up until like late December of 2017 when these characters, Tracy Beans, Paul Furber, and Coleman Rogers, and I believe it was Tracy's idea, say, "Let's, let's, uh, start a board on Reddit that's devoted to QAnon."

Joe Rogan 1:15:22 Oh.

Cullen Hoback 1:15:22 "That's gonna reach, that's gonna reach, you know, a much wider audience." Um, and, and it certainly did.

Joe Rogan 1:15:28 So that's 2017?

Cullen Hoback 1:15:29 2017, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:29 So Reddit is where it branches out?

Cullen Hoback 1:15:31 Reddit branches out, and then it also branches out when they go on The Alex Jones Show.

Joe Rogan 1:15:36 (clears throat)

Cullen Hoback 1:15:36 And that becomes a, a big, a big boom. Um-

Joe Rogan 1:15:39 So then it becomes fun?

Cullen Hoback 1:15:40 Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's when-

Joe Rogan 1:15:42 And then-

Cullen Hoback 1:15:42 That's when people, that's when the excitement kind of kicks up. But you had a lot of the Anons who were pissed off that they had gone on Alex Jones, that they were going mainstream. Um, they didn't, they didn't like-

Joe Rogan 1:15:51 They wanted everybody to stay anonymous.

Cullen Hoback 1:15:53 And they didn't like the celebrity status of it. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:55 That's fascinating.

Cullen Hoback 1:15:56 In fact ... Oh. Here's the-

Joe Rogan 1:15:57 Fascinating part of the culture, right?

Cullen Hoback 1:15:59 So here's a, yeah, really fascinating, and you can see it even in Q's mentality, um, towards Tracy, because he ... Okay, so this is, this is great. I had talked with, um, I talked with all of the board owners for, for Q. So everybody who had ever, um, been in charge of the like craziest thing on the internet that's QAnon, right? Like, um, where Q had been posting on their board. Um, I asked them all like, "Okay, well, did Q ever communicate with you?" Right? "Did Q ever, you know, send you messages?" And they said, "Well, not like direct messages. But Q, because of that IP address, would sometimes post anonymously openly on the boards so that only the board owner or the moderators would know it was Q." So it was a way of communicating with those who were running the boards without the entire public knowing it. And so they would be able to just go, "Okay, same IP, bring it up." And there was one inc- and they didn't, Q didn't do this very often, very, very rarely. Um, but one of the board owners was like, "There's a really unbelievable moment." Like I, my jaw just dropped that Q was, Q was saying this stuff. You know, and, and I was on this call with like a couple of other, um, you know, um, uh, folks who were, who were, uh, big into Q at the time. I think like ... Anyway, um, they were all like, "Wait, what, what is it? What is it?" Um, I think we