Danny Wallace is just one of those people who you just know, not for anything specific but just because he's done a lot and a lot of it is blooming great. I knew of him through his voice work on the videogame series Assassins Creed and from his podcast Awkward Situations for Men but mostly for his emotionally resonant voice work on Thomas Was Alone, an existential videogame where he is the narrator telling the tale of sentient quadrilaterals. That game man... it broke me and remains one of the most powerful games I've ever played.
Anyways, this is a deep dive into lies, falsification and untruths and is done in the usual conversational fun tone that Wallace usually conveys. We live in interesting times, and Wallace seeks to peel back the layers to see why and how this has happened. Over the course of next 340 pages (or 8 hours and 40 minutes in the audiobook I listened to) we slowly see Danny Wallace lose himself, albeit hilariously, down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory and paranoia.
He starts off with an apocraphal tale of Coco, the gorilla who learned to sign, crack a joke or two and then... lie. Wallace discusses how it may be an innately human thing to lie and this should have served as a warning sign of decline. He then hits the big stuff over 5 sections.
Section I: Trust No One
The Old Chinese Man: Spies, Lies and Chicken Thighs
He starts off on a sombre tone as he discusses the death of his father and the tidying up of affairs and correspondences. He then goes down a rabbit hole where he sees a 12 year correspondence between his father and an old Chinese man he'd met for 10 minutes whilst presenting a lecture in China in 2009. They remained in contact and the messages get weirder, very Pro-China and very garbled. Wallace seeks to look into the purpose of them and thinks that there was a chance that either his dad was a spy or was asked to be a spy.
The Rabbit Hole: I Did My Own Research
Wallace starts the chapter discussing how the world became more suspicious of their neighbour and how the pandemic exacerbated this with the concept of 'truth' and 'I did my own research' being more fluid. He runs through the processes he went through to find out about the Old Chinese Man and ends up with his own personal conspiracy theory.
May You Live in Interesting Times: 2020 Vision and the Year the World Lost Its Mind
Wallace then considers where conspiracy theories became the norm and pins it on 2020 and the Covid Pandemic which turned people at home into nutters. He breaks down briefly multiple conspiracies including 5G, Bill Gates, The Great Reset and how a similar thing happened in the past with cholera, the Russian flu and Spanish flu.
Section II: Family Lies
'You'll See': When Bad Information Divides a Relationship
Wallace discusses the conspiracy theory spiral that many individuals go through and how social media and algorithms hone in on this fact to provide you with similar content creating a filter bubble. He provides some startling facts from America about their belief in a Globalist Conspiracy and QAnon and how often it is linked to the old antisemetic trope.
A therapist who deals with conspiracy theorists says that it is often women in the wellness realm that get hooked on the disinformation spiral as they are more distrusting of Big Pharma and medicine.
Going Viral: How the Worst News Can Attract the Worst People
This covers the idea that crisis actors are used to help perpetuate the agenda of the shadowy elites. It incorporates anti-vaxxers, global elites and pedophile rings.
We hear the tragic story of an immunised man in Wales who lost his parents and brother, all who were anti-vaxxers and died within the same week.
We also hearing from a scientist who is an expert in the area of Virology and he speaks about how bad-faith actors like Lawrence Fox were using Covid as a platform to speak into a more right wing leaning ideology.
Information War: When You're Told What's Definitely Happening is Not Happening
Wallace speaks about how the counter-narrative culture and gaslighting was used by the Russians state when they attacked Ukraine. Even when bombs were raining down within the country, the influencers and youth of much of Russia were claiming that it was lies and Western propaganda.
Interestingly, and unknown to me, Russians really are into astrology. The belief that the celestial movements can foretell the future has been an old favourite for years but in Russia, post Communism, it came back in a big way and has never really left since.
Section III: The Believers
Building a Brand: You Can't Say Anything These Days (But You Can for Money)
Wallace looks into the whole brand grifter scene where people become more right wing to earn money and influence, even if they don't believe half of what they spout.
He discusses how even news is full of opinions and extreme left and right wing pundits to have a barney on air as it'll get more views and maybe even go viral.
Wallace has a deep dive into Russell Brand and how his pivot from overly verbose porkswordmeister 'truthseeker' to weird pseudo-conspiracy theorist to born again Christian - all conveniently timed with the release of allegations against him.
Wallace also calls out grifters in the entertainment industry and the rise of the 'I'm just saying' and 'You can't say that anymore.'
Brent: Extreme Beliefs - The Man Who Believed It All, and How He Got Out
This chapter looks at Wallace's early career forays into conspiracy theories including time spent with Alex Jones (pre big time Info Wars) and Gareth Icke (David Icke's son) before looking at how YouTube acted as a conduit to main-streaming fringe views.
He explains that 9/11 truthers, wary of trusting their government, came out with increasingly outlandish claims about what happened that day and why. Inevitably, it leads to the Globalists, Shadowy Elite, Bankers etc... I mean, doesn't it always?
He then talks to Brent, a truther who gave his head a wobble post Sandy Hook, and discusses how he found his way out of the conspiracy mire. It came at much personal cost as many of his connections now think he is in the pay of the devil but what do you do with that?
Terry: It Starts Small - A Man at the Beginning of His Journey
To counter this Wallace meets Terry, a 50 something man from Ipswich who is adding a conspiracy lens to the proposed regeneration of the crumbling city centre.
As always, what it boils down to is the simple fact that the town in different from how it was and he thinks it's part of the plan for the shadowy elite to control us. Maybe Terry and his pals should think about the past couple of decades of chronic underinvestment in infrastructure and services, which is the root cause for a lot of societies ills than some unnamed but stereotypically implied shadowy group.
Section IV: The Other Side of the Screen
Veronika: Local Media and When You Just Don't Know Who's Who
Wallace looks at troll farms and does a deep dive into how they are seeking to undermine the reporting of truth by seeding false stories and politically sensitive articles that are also patently false. The Internet Research Agency is a shit posting agency that looks to sow distrust within society and so erode our social fabric. That's why we get emails trying to blackmail us about our 'salacious' we searches and you get strange Spanglishy sentences like 'what a load of cheeky nonsense' after a serious email.
Natascha and the Troll Factory: The Troll Factory: The Race to Amplify Lies and Silence the Truth
The 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics outlined a Russian plan to bring disorder to American politics by encouraging isolationist policies and broadening secretarian and racist ideologies to create a schism. Over the last few years with MAGA and Brexit I'd say it's a huge that.
The Goebels 60/40 method is discussed where 60 is truth and 40 percent lies with an occasional whopper thrown in-all create disyltrusf of public agencies.
He then talks to a journalist, Jessica Arrow, who investigated the IRA troll factory and is now fearing for her life.
Section V: It Will All Get Much Worse
Lonely Boys: The Dangers of Isolation, Rejection and Sexy Robots
Wallace looks at Nastia, a Russian lovebot, who aims to manipulate lonely men with her patter and create the conditions perfect for right wing incels to thrive. When Covid hit, isolation and loneliness increased as people went online and got caught up in conspiracy groups online. This especially affected single middle-aged men as they didn't have anyone to call out their bullshit theories and redirect them in their thinking.
The Grown Ups: What Are We Doing to Protect Our People?
The British civil service get a bit of a bad rap amongst many in the media circuit but generally, they are experts or people well attuned to their area of expertise. The Cabinet Office of The Rapid Response Unit for Identifying False Narratives (or fake news in common parlance) tracks the false narratives, the responses and then suggests an appropriate response. It is doing this work constantly and so, in the UK, we have a keep calm and carry on situation with this operating in the background. Does it deal with everything? No. But the approach of amplifying truth with its soft power seems to be the approach taken.
Okay. So How Screwed Are We?: Hope in the Never Ending Unease
There is a concern that there will not be many democracies left within 5 years as social media, news channels with experts and some random person with opinions but no knowledge are the main drivers. We are polarised as a society because everyone wants to find a tribe.
There are a few suggestions to help stem the lies including regulation, crowd sourcing notes and education. Wallace discusses how there are plans underway to prepare the youth of today to counter such nonsense and be more discerning with the online world but, as with climate change, we need to be doing things now so we can't wash our hands of it. Similar to Haidt, Wallace says regulation is key and will set the standard for what happens in the future.
The Old Chinese Man: And the Great, What If...?
Wallace goes back to the Old Chinese Man story from before and, knowing all he knows, starts to get to the truth. I thoroughly enjoyed the book as Wallace follows clue, thread and hunch to their logical conclusion and ends up at a denouement we knew it would end up - it was all nonsense and he saw and sought patterns where there are none. Humans are always seeking patterns.
This audiobook feels like a companion piece to Jon Ronson's podcast Things Fell Apart, where ordinary folk have been affected by lies and nonsense and there are real world consequences, and The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt where he talks about the negative impact of social media and big tech.
I particularly liked his examination of how easy it is to fall down the rabbit hole as it nearly happened to me. In my teens years, I struggled with the same pressure as everyone else but also the code switching of my British-Islamic life. I used to visit a youth centre in town and got talking to a charasmatic worker there. After several drop-ins he mentioned I that I should check out David Icke and I did. And the Truth Shall Set You Free seemed to answer a lot of questions but blew my mind in terms of social norms and history. I fell for it for a few weeks until a friend on my Anthropology course questioned the logic and made me think it though. I came out of the other end relatively unscathed but armed with the knowledge that falling for nonsense is easily done, moreso if you have destabilising anchors and lack deep interpersonal relationships.
Reading the reviews for this book on Amazon, which range from 5 to 1 star with very little in the middle, you can see how split the opinions are from those who think Wallace is shining a light on a real issue from those who think he is part of the elite playing us. Wherever you stand on this, this book is essential as over the 5 sections it covers pretty much all you need to know about how conspiracy theories started, grew and are now part of the geopolitical and social landscape. Interesting times indeed!
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