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Seventeen two nineteen, two hundred and twenty seven. General public, please disregard as this podcast as fighting battles on multiple fronts. This podcast is it could happen here, and I'm Garrison Davis. Last episode, I talked with Miowong about the trajectory of liberal conspiracy theories, specifically throughout the last ten years, from Russia Gate to Trump's staged assassination and twenty twenty four election denial. This resurgence of liberal conspiracism has been dubbed Bluanon.
If you want more background on that, go listen to our previous episode. But this episode is about a new evolution of bluing on and possibly the most Qanani iteration we've seen yet. The Alt National Park Service, a social media engagement farming account that gained traction on Blue Sky and Facebook last February. In March admidst cuts to the
Park Service from the Trump administration. This account gained followers by posing as a group of anti Trump dissidents from within the Park Service, and soon enough it inspired a collection of other alt government accounts like Alt CDC, Alt Nih,
Alt Yellowstone, and Alt Noah. The original Alt National Park Service account basically never talks about the park Service itself, but during the first few months of Trump's second term, the account started going viral by posting sequences of random numbers as ostensibly coded messages to other hashtag resistance fighters, though the account has since experimented with, altered and refined
their engagement strategies. To hear more about that and how Alt National Park Service fits into this trend of liberal conspiracy theories, I talked with someone who has spent the past few months documenting and writing about this account. The person who runs the alt Watcher account on Blue Sky and writes about their research on the blog Dispatches from the Online Void. So here's that interview.
My name's Jack. I'm the user behind the account alt Watcher on Blue Sky, and I've been following the Alt National Park Service for about six months, just documenting what they do and how they steal from journalists and how they're driving a lot of people insane, including me.
What is the Alt National Park Service or first, what does the Alt National Park Service claim to be?
Yeah, that's an important difference. The All National Park Service claims to be a loose affiliation of a non former parks employees that are either still employed by the Park Service and kind of working behind the scenes, or who were fired or laid off by the Trump administration and are now part of a nationwide coalition to resist the government. That's what they claim to be. What they really are
is just a Facebook shit posting account. We're not sure if it's one person behind it or if it's a group. It's remarkably hard to find out anything about the person who is behind the account, who they are, where they are, and how they started this. But what they do most of the time is repost the work of journalists, directly plagiarize from news outlets, and post these vaguely conspiratorial things online to try to whip up engagement from their followers.
I first became aware of this back in probably March of twenty twenty five, specifically when on Blue Sky they just started posting a lot of numbers. Yes, I was aware that this account was created, like in the aftermath of some some like Doge related cuts to the Park Service or like anti Dei, anti woke stuff, And then this account popped up claiming to be you know, like resistance from inside to people who watch politics like seriously
for their jobs. Was very clear that this was not a legitimate organization, and then they just started posting numbers sequences of numbers along with other cryptic messages, and this like immediately starts hitting like the q Andon bells. Back in July of twenty twenty four, there's a Washington Post article about the Trump assassination conspiracy theories, but specifically it was it was a I think it was an opinion piece critical of terming liberal conspiracy.
Theories as as quote unquote bleuing on.
They said, quote the main similarity of QAnon and bluing
on is that they rhyme. And for a while I kind of understood this criticism and agree with parts of it, because there was there was structural differences between some of how you know, liberals or like quote unquote the left engage in conspiratorial thinking, and like the function of chewing on the numbers think started to really mess with that analysis because then you started to see the actual like methodology and like the ideological function of q andon start
to get replicated in what is most likely just like engagement farming, but for the people who are following this account and engaging with it, and like it becomes like an important part of their life and their their perception of like hashtag resistance. And I think that's where blue and on actually proved itself as a term, was in March of twenty five, I guess, let's talk about the numbers.
You know what I would love I would love to talk about the numbers are also what stood out to me, and that is why I ended up making my account and diving into all this. During the pandemic, I got obsessed with quana, you know, as as just what is this?
A lot of people did.
A lot of people did, you know, Look, pandemic did a lot of crazy things to us. Some people learned to knit, some people got good at baking. I got really learning about q and on and I am. I'm a huge fan of the QAA podcast. I listened to that constantly, And as soon as I saw altonps post one of the numbers, I realized, I'm reading this in their que voice. Yeah, their their voice modulated voice that
sounds like this whenever they would post. And I started reading all the numbers post that way, and just like you said, something clicked and I went, oh this is oh, I see what they're doing. Here. Yeah, and they've posted numbers many times. I've got my giant spreadsheet pulled up here and I think they've posted something like thirty numbers.
It's been a while since they've done it. But the thing that really gave the game away from me was during one of these numbers posts, they posted some random number and then replied to themselves and said, for discussion, what do you think these numbers mean? And I said, oh, I see what's happening.
Here, kind of giving away the game there exactly.
Yeah.
This is not a group of government insiders communicating with their coalition. This is the user behind a Facebook account realizing in real time that they've stumbled on like a gold mine for engagement. Yeah, oh, we can just do this and people will do the work for us, and we're just going to say that out.
Loud and throughout. Like March and April, their count just like rocketed in popularity. Yes, I've not actually looked on their Facebook account. Besides, like the post that you've shared, I've only seen them on Blue Sky. What is the difference of their presence on Facebook versus like blue Sky Blue Sky.
I think there at something like nine hundred k on Facebook the last time I checked, it was about four point three million.
Geez.
Yeah, they are a massive presence on Facebook, and they've been monetizing their posts recently. There have been sponsored content on Facebook leading to their page.
This is where I think one of the differences from like how Q and unfunctioned and all National Park Service, because you know, Q was not monetizing posts on the.
Chances I would have loved to see him try. That'd be really funny.
I do not see like this account existing as like as a sort of operation to influence the political trajectory of the United States the same way that the qan on account at least evolved in that capacity. Even if it started off as like a shit posting thing exactly, it certainly evolved with more of a malicious intent. The people behind you know, Q posting.
Yeah, I think that's a big difference between them, is that this is straightforwardly an engagement far.
Yeah, using some those tactics, especially like early on, but for a very simple reason, and that's that's making money on the Internet.
Like everybody is trying to do it.
It's just like internet hustle culture stuff with no grappling with like the consequences that has for like the psyche of people who engage with your contents.
Exactly, and the psyche of people who engage with this content is really what keeps me coming back to this project, because that is the real harm I see here. Like the online drifters are a diamond, doesn't you know people who sell stuff online? It's everywhere, it's inescapable. What's unique about alt NPS is that they are trying to make money on convincing people that this is really you know,
they're not just selling hashtag resist shirts or whatever. They're trying to get money out of people by convincing them that they really are part of a shadow resistance against against Trump, and that you can buy their shirts or you can straightforwardly just send them money for things like their all Junior Ranger program that they've said they're starting, and if you send them a dollar, you're helping fund
that program. And it's totally real. And the fact that they didn't mention it for seven straight months after initially announcing it is something you definitely shouldn't worry about.
Do you know what else you definitely shouldn't worry about? This short at break so they have face pushback for their numbers posting, but they have found a way to justify it publicly, to talk about like how they've framed the posting of just like four numbers, two numbers, and like the sort of like defense of the account that it plays.
Yeah, that was this maybe says something about me, But that was maybe the post that made me the angriest of anything they've done, because I have a deep seated reaction to feeling like one of the thinks I'm stupid, And all I could think is do you think I'm an idiot? When I saw their reaction to this, Because we are often criticized for the numbers we post online. We can't tell you everything. Sorry, And then they went on this big half explanation about stingrays and cell site simulators.
Cell site simulators.
Yeah, but they didn't explain what those actually do. They did not explicitly claim they were being surveilled by one, and they didn't explain why the existence of stingrays and cell site simulators means that they should.
Do all this on Facebook instead posting numbers does not bypass the security concerns posed by the presence of a cell site simulator. No, because you're still posting publicly on the Internet.
That doesn't matter at all.
Yeah, you're pulling something the other of your asse that sounds technical, that's going to trick your average boomer And maybe you know three out of five gen X people who are scrolling Facebook slash Blue Sky and like that's all they need to do. But for anyone who knows what a cell site simulator is or how like internet communications works, it's very very clear that this is just like completely bullshit.
It's completely bullshit because you're right that this is all they need to do. They just need to deflect. And I think that's what stood out to me about this post in particular, is that it showed me that the person or people behind all the time ps have a genuine level of pr skill. You know, they have a certain level of what I think is a real skill at deflection public relations and being able to spin what
they're saying. You know, that's a genuine skill. It's a shame that it's being applied to this instead of, I mean, anything else, But that is a skill that they have that they're able to deploy in defense of their conspiratorial posting.
The other thing that they post in relation to the numbers is there one time forward catchphrase general public can disregard? Don't I talk about the context of those posts.
Yes, those were replies that they would make to the numbers posts, usually to the numbers posts, but occasionally to just some other cryptic thing they would post. They would post their numbers, say forty four, and then they would reply to themselves saying general public can disregard, or they'd say please disregard if you are a member of the general public. And there were a lot of people online who saw that and thought, oh, that must mean it's a code. It has to be real.
They're engaged in some sort of like secret agent spy work, and this is very really important. Yeah.
Yeah, And I would see a lot of people push back on any criticism that the account would get for this by saying things like, it's code for a reason. You know, guys, they're speaking in code. Don't try to crack the code. It's not for us, you know, this
is for the coalition. And whenever anybody would say I don't think this is real, or like any of the things we've talked about about, why this doesn't make sense, they would instantly be accused of being a right wing infiltrator or a troll or a MAGA spy or something like that. You know, there can be no actual criticism of the account. There can only be infiltration.
Yeah, and that does have more like Q overlap, I suppose absolutely.
I don't know.
It's odd because like throughout through writing about all this like bluing on stuff. As much as this stuff is a legitimate problem, like which it is, it's just a symptom of a larger political problem in America, and the people engaged with it, if anything, are kind of victims
as well as like perpetrators. And like this was the same thing with like Q and on, where like your average person engaged with it as bad as it is and some of the stuff that they might like say or do, I also just feel bad for the people involved.
And it's this same thing with this.
As annoying as this kind of like lib slop can be, the people who have to have to believe in something like this in order to like keep going, that is kind of like a tragedy in a way, and this is obviously is serving some important psychological function for them.
Yeah, I totally agree, And I think that's that sadness. I think is What keeps me wanting to engage with this. You know, when I look at this and I see alt NPS trying to get people to buy their T shirts or just farm engagement, that's not remarkable to me. That's normal. Yeah, that happens on the internet all the time. What keeps me coming back to wanting to fight this and wanting to document all this is the people I see in the replies. Yeah, the people who say that
alt NPS brings them so much hope. It's what's keeping them from falling into despair. And it's not that I want to take that away from them, It's that I don't like that their need for that is being used.
Yeah, this is like a predatory mode of trying to capital that.
Absolutely. Yeah, the account is trying to capitalize on people's need for hope. You know, they need to believe that there is someone fighting for them because in a lot of ways, it doesn't feel like anyone is. You know, it feels like our politicians are ineffectual, our institutions are crumbling. We need someone to be there. We need ironically, we need patriots to be in control. Yeah, we need to trust the plan. There is an appeal to that, and
I do understand that. I understand that these people are looking for a light in the darkness, and I really can't pretend that I'm not doing the same thing totally through my writing on this. I need something to cling to, and I can't blame anybody for feeling that way too.
I mean, that's why I feel like your project, though, it comes from a much better and like healthier place, because you are looking at this like decline in nationwide American sanity and trying to do something about it, even if that's just a documentation, and then writing about it and trying to explain to people and like help help
people understand where the psyche of the country is. And I think part of what makes me so interested in your project is that, like it reminds me a little bit of people who started studying qan on, you know, back in like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, Yeah, yeah, yeah, back when it's just this little, cute, small thing, and then you fast forward years later they realize they've actually done some extremely important like work documenting of phenomenon that
is shaping the trajectory of our country.
And I don't know.
If alt National Park Service is going to evolve in the same way. But I think the slow embrace of this sort of conspirator worl thinking among decently sized like chunks of the democratic base, I think is very notable and work Like what you're doing, I think actually has a really important place in trying to like map where our country might might be headed.
And yeah, in a few years it might.
Somehow it might sturn out to be super important when the Libs finally do their own j six.
So yeah, I mean, I to be honest, I would be very happy if this whole thing petered out. Sure, you know, I would be very happy if one day the account just stops posting and there is no years long continuation with this like there was was something like you or not, you know. But I do think ALTNPS is a part of a broader ecosystem of this blue and on world. And you know, I do agree with what you said earlier that bluanon is a phrase that
I think does get overused. Yeah, that there are some things that are just normal people, you know, expressing their political opinions that kind of gets derided as oh blue and not, But it really is just people being normal or people being extremely online, but ALTENPS is a part of a bigger world of this sort of vaguely left
wing conspiracism. You know, I'm seeing a lot of crossover between people who post in reply to all t enps and people who have this sort of mantra about Trump that he wasn't shot, he didn't win, he's on the list. And you see that exact phrase, you know, post it over and over and over again. It's in pictures, it's in memes, it's in people's posts. And I think all t NPS is a part of that. I think they're emblematic of that. Yeah, that you are not immune to conspiratorial think.
We are not better than that now, and they're facilitating I think that mindset. I think liberals became so susceptible to it because they had this conception that they're immune to it, that that conspiracy thinking is something that only exists on the political right. Yes, that's for other people, And this is part.
Of what I'm going to write about it.
Like in general, but like the way that contessus reality was like sheared down so heavily during the first Rump administration, and like parts of the body of administration by people on the right that like, weakened this notion we have of Concetta's reality that then liberals kind of got blindsided by when events happened that were hard to understand or felt so surreal or like bombastic, that it allowed a split that was already there to grow into a pretty
wide opening where you now believe that major historical events are fake and staged, that an election is stolen. And you're like, what, what does this remind you of?
Like?
What, Yes, one of the things you're saying remind you of is in this part of why you're against the Trump movement in the first place.
Yeah, And I think God help you if you ever try and point that out. Yeah, you know, to a lot of the people in these replies that just like, hey, guys, doesn't a lot of this smell a lot like you or not? You know, doesn't this sound a lot like the way people talked about the twenty twenty election? You know, doesn't this smell the same way? And that is when people in especially in all t NPS's replies, will go nuclear.
You know.
There, I've seen some incredible dog biles in response people bringing this up, even if it's if it's anadyte you know, and even if it is just hey guys, just a reminder, I think this is something that we should you know, maybe I'll take with a grain of salt. People go nuts, you know. They they need to believe it needs to be real and it needs to be unquestioned and that there can be no good faith questioning of this idea.
Do you know what else is an unquestioned truth that we have to go on one more ad break before we return to conclude our discussion on.
The Alt National Park Service.
It's easy to see how they reached just a certain like ceiling on how much they can just numbers post and have that be a reliable method of engagement that they've started to like experiment with with with different types of posting to see what makes people stick, who can help help with engagement over a long period of time instead of just like rocketing to like virality first but
then having a stable audience. And now they're basically a news aggregator account but deceptively framing where they are getting their news from.
Yeah, they are a news aggregator account with massive caveats.
Yeah, yes, well, I mean I think most news aggregator accounts are actually bad.
Yeah, I'd agree.
This is something we saw in twenty twenty, was how unreliable news aggregator accounts were and how much of a harm that they caused. And I see the current version of all National Park Service as kind of an extension of that taken to a slightly higher level.
I suppose I'm.
Obsessed with this, you know, I've said that a few times, but I've documented what I think is most of the times that they have posted a news article without attribution and either just described something where they could have or should have posted a link to an actual article, or more more often, just copy pasting sections of an article and reposting it as though they wrote it. You know, those are the ones that really get me. Those are the the aspects of their news aggregation where you say
this is just plagiarism. You know, this is just you stealing verbatim from an article and acting as though you wrote it, because you want your audience to think that you are a government insider with all this inside information, and that information like that is coming first to you, not to the New York Times, not to CNN.
Even though you're just posting sections of the New York Times and CNN.
Yeah. I mean they took the first I think three paragraphs of an article from Wired and did it word for word, didn't link to Wired, didn't say where it came from, and implied that the information was being sent to the rangers of the All National Park Service instead of two journalists at Wired. This happens constantly, you know, and every time I think, well, they've been posting more links slately, they've been linking directly to actual sources of information.
Every time I start thinking that, they do it again. You know, they steal another thing again, or they've started posting to court watcher or directly to government documents in what I'm thinking as an attempt to dodge accusations like the one I make. Somebody in my comments described it as the don't cite Wikipedia, cite Wikipedia's reference page problem.
They're reading an article from NPR, and rather than just saying, hey, we've heard this in NPR, they're going to NPR's citation of the Department of Justice and linking directly to that instead to make it look like they're diligently watching government court records and posting them for our benefit the moment they come out, instead of just we saw this in the Washington Post.
And they've been engaging this for like a few months now with this sort of behavior.
Oh yeah, they've been doing that since January February. Yeah, they've also started claiming for a while, and then they stopped that. One of their sources they would list at the end of their posts was an unnamed official in whatever relevant government agency they were talking about. Our sources include this newspaper, this website, and an unnamed Department of Justice official, an unnamed Department of Education official. They suddenly
stopped doing that as soon as they started. There was about a week or two where that was behind about every post.
Anything else you want to add about either the existence of these like alt accounts, or like any other like aspect of this world you want to mention before we before we close up.
Yeah, I do have two quick ones, and the first is that among the alt accounts that you see online, the Alt National Park Service is overwhelmingly the most malicious and the most harmful. You know, there are may be a couple others that get a little wild, that are maybe a little conspiratorial. I think Alt Noah has been kind of in the spotlight for that lately. But a lot of them, like ALT CDC, the ALT Forest Service, all these random little alt government agency accounts are pretty harmless,
you know. They really are just posting links to news articles or given updates on their relevant agency. Allt Forest Service mostly talks about the Forest Service. Allt CDC mostly talks about the CDC. ALT NPS basically never talks about the National Park Service. I think I can count on one hand the times that they have said anything about
the parks. There was a point when I think it was in the big beautiful budget bill where there were these massive cuts being proposed to the National Park Service, and they talked about the bill as a whole and didn't mention anything about the cuts of the Park Service.
Well, you never know who's watching the communication channels, so you got to be careful. There's cell site simulators out there.
There's cell site simulators out there. And then the second thing is that I'm always very careful in my writing and in my posts to emphasize that the people who followed this account are not the problem the account itself is. You know, I always want to make sure to have a lot of empathy for people who follow this account, because I understand why they did. I understand the hope they're looking for, and I never want to do what I say. See some people do in the replies to
Altenps's posts, which is dunking on their followers. You know, how do you rubes believe this? Do you idiots still think this is real? I never want to do that because that doesn't help anyone. What that does is make them dig in, It makes them double down. So I always want to make sure to treat the followers of these accounts with respect, you know, treat them with empathy, talk to them like a person. Yeah, And that's how I've managed to get a few people to get out.
I've managed to have people tell me that it was through my writing and other people's work on this topic that they were able to get out, They were able to disengage from this world of fake spies and code numbers. And I think that matters. I think that that helps with every little bit we do, And it starts by just being nice to people, just being kind to people who are looking for hope in the world we live in.
Where can people find your work both on social media and then also you're writing.
Me on Blue Sky at Altwatcher dot bsky dot social and I am unfortunately still on substack at my name it's Jajoyce Lynch dot substack dot com. And also look for dispatches from the Online Void is the name of the blog.
There should absolutely be more people reading your dispatches from the Online Void. There is some very very solid work just straightly documenting the phenomenon that we've been talking about this episode and specifically the Alt National Park Service.
Well, I really appreciate it.
Yeah, it's fantastic, very like non editorialized, just showing you what's happening.
Extremely we'll put together.
Well, thanks, thanks, and nice for you to say.
Thanks again to Jack for talking with me about Alt National Park Service. I strongly recommend people seek out his research, both on Dispatches from the Online Void and Blue Sky. Before I close this episode, I want to remind everybody
that you two are not immune to propaganda. This past weekend, the internet has been a buzz with rumors and speculation that Trump died over the weekend or was actively dying, and there's been attempts to cover it up, when in fact he just went on a brief Labor day weekend holiday.
People were sharing ai altered images to make Trump look more sickly, and were speculating about road closures around Walter Reed Medical Center, sharing a map with roads blocked off, but in fact, there were no irregular road closures, and this map of supposed closures that was spreading online just
showed old security gates. People concocted elaborate theories that Putin poisoned Trump during their last meeting, and that when the quote unquote president was supposed to give an announcement on Tuesday afternoon, it would be Trump resigning for health reasons, or Vance would come out and announced Trump died and he is now the president. And sure enough, come Tuesday afternoon,
Trump appeared perfectly normal for a press conference. Even in the lead up to the press conference, I saw people continuing these conspiracy theories with sometimes a tat of irony. But as the press conference got delayed an hour, there was more and more speculation about Trump's declining health and yeah, he is an old man, but he is not going
to drop dead this weekend. This isn't true. This is a copium strategy, and the way people have been talking about it is very similar to the liberal conspiracy theories that I've been reading about these past few weeks, and as fun as it can be to speculate about a president's health, as many people did last time we had a geriatric president when was that, oh, last year? But as much fun as it is, things can quickly spiral out of your conspiratorial control, even when your percipasion is
from the safety of ironic detachment. I'll talk a little bit more about Trump's imminent death theories on this week's episode of Executive Disorder, but until then, just remember you are not immune to propaganda.
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