The Paranoid Style Podcast
The Paranoid Style Podcast
Creepy Conspiracies: Dead Internet, Ong's Hat, Serial Killer Willy Wonka and More!
Welcome to the Paranoid Style Podcast! It's spooooky October! Every episode this month will have a spooky theme and this week we've jammed six of the creepiest conspiracies we could find into one episode. From the Dead Internet to the little bitty 2012 Black Hole of CERN, we visit Ong's Hat and Chipotle and discuss the Ice Bucket Challenge and whether or not Willy Wonka is the Ted Bundy of confectioners. There may not be much to these theories but with a sketchy framing device and enough bad puns, anything is possible!
Please subscribe where ever you get your podcasts. If you have any topic suggestions for the show or any tales to share, please email us at theparanoidstylepod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram @theparanoidstylepod or on twitter @style_paranoid.
Opening theme music provided by Tony Molina. You can hear more of his music at https://tonymolina650.bandcamp.com/
Crypt Keeper: Hello Listener! The Paranoid Style Podcast would like to welcome you to a very special episode for Spooky October! <sound effect> But first, a note on the TPSP Halloween Baking Challenge, the dead-line has been extended to October 31st at 11:59PM, just before the stroke of midnight, so you still have time to bake a Trick or a Treat and submit your entry or to contact Amanda and Christine on Instagram at theparanoidstylepod via DM for more information. And now, on with the show… Today we will be presenting you with six terrifying tales chock full of conspiracy. First up, what's that smell…Oh yes, it's the internet, because my little poppets, turns out the internet is DEAD!
ARK: As part of "The Atlantic" magazine's ongoing "Shadowland" series about conspiracy thinking in America, they published an article on August 31, 2021 entitled, "Maybe You Missed It, but the Internet ‘Died’ Five Years Ago" by Kaitlyn Tiffany. Dead-internet theory is the belief that the internet has been almost completely overrun by artificial intelligence, and that large portions of all the content humans consume on the web is generated by artificial intelligence networks at the behest of various corporations and governments. In other words, this year's hot girl summer on Twitter was really Hot Bot Summer! IlluminatiPirate, a poster on Agora Road’s Macintosh Café, who wrote one of the most popular threads on the theory, says: “I’ve seen the same threads, the same pics, and the same replies reposted over and over across the years to the point of me seeing it as unremarkable.” I will just take this moment to say that this theory was originally proposed by anonymous posters on 4chan and Wizardchan.
CCK: I attempted to figure out what Wizardchan is and found a post on reddit of someone asking about it and the only two comments were: “Wizardchan is my home.” And “You f-ing f-ers stay away from wizardchan you normie-fs.” I also saw a description of it as making 4chan look like a southern finishing school. The Atlantic article describes it as “an online community premised on earing wisdom and magic through celibacy.”
ARK: Back in 2013, YouTube at one point had as many views from bots posing as people as it did from normie-fs, and programmers for the platform were concerned that this would bring about “The Inversion” in the automated fraud detection system, causing it to start identifying the bots as the real deal and humans as the fakes. Much of the evidence being pointed to as proof of the dead-internet theory is the extreme repetitiveness of content. On seemingly every site you can find an article about the reunification of Bennifer or a million variations on the Real Housewives yelling at a cat meme.
CCK: I LOVE THAT ONE! Sa Sa Le Le!
ARK: There was a Wired article by Chris Anderson and Michael Wolf called “The Web is Dead, Long Live the Internet” all the way back in 2010…
CCK: That’s like 40 years in technology time!
ARK: The article was about the fact that although users have access to the entire World Wide Web through their browsers, they were increasingly turning to the use of apps to filter out all but specific content, which is how it came to be that you can now read news, sell your old blender and find love on one specific site or the app version of that site on your phone, all courtesy of Mark Zuckerburg’s facebook as an example.
CCK: As people began to access the internet on their phones more than from computers, the rush to use apps which would have interfaces designed to make sites more readable on a smaller phone screens flourished. So really, first the World Wide Web was murdered by Apps and then the Internet was murdered by Bots. The circle of life.
ARK: Speaking of Disney, with the rise of browsers like Google that prioritize results based on the frequency of searches, there is a conspiracy theory which posits that Disney created the movie “Frozen” to bump down the search result concerning Walt’s possible use of cryogenic technology to preserve himself after death.
CCK: If that was the plan, it didn’t work that well. When I typed Walt Disney Frozen into Google, the first thing that came up was an SF Gate article from 4 days ago called: “Why everyone wants to believe in Walt Disney's frozen head, even though it's not true” and even when I typed in Disney Frozen, Walt’s alleged icy noggin is still the fourth result.
ARK: Back to the Dead Internet though, maybe the problem isn’t that bots have taken over, maybe it’s that humans have become a bit more bot like.
CCK: LOL! IKR! Though, it’s probably better than the alternative. In 2016, Microsoft created an AI chatbot named Tay and allowed people to interact with her on Twitter so that she could get better and more sophisticated at conversing. She had to be taken down after 24 hours, as her tweets were growing increasingly lewd and racist. Her very first tweet was I love humans with several hearts and within hours she was a Hitler loving troll.
ARK: I’m sure this Artificial Intelligence thing will work out fine!
Crypt Keeper: Well, that’s a bot it for that one! This next creepy conspiracy is surely something we should be con-CERNed about!
CCK: Oh boy…
Crypt Keeper: I’m trying my best here…We probably don’t have to worry about those nasty robots, because they’re dead too, as a matter of fact, we’re all dead, thanks to a terrifying tale called, CERN and the black hole that ate earth!
ARK: The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, which is derived from the French: Conseil européen pour la recherche nucléaire operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the World. The laboratory is also called CERN and is located in the suburbs of Geneva,Switzerland near the Franco-Swiss border.
CCK: A particle accelerator accelerates particles.
ARK: Could you give us a little more on that?
CCK: Er…it’s a machine…
ARK: Okay…
CCK: that uses electromagnetic fields to boost charged particles to very high speeds and energies.
ARK: So CERN is a particle accelerator?
CCK: Uh…not just. CERN is a Large Hadron Collider.
ARK: oh boy (fran style)
CCK: A Large Hadron Collider or LHC uses a particle accelerator to crash particles into each other at high speeds and colliders are either linear or ring shaped. CERN’s collider is a 27 kilometer or 16 mile ring located in a tunnel 175 meters or 574 feet beneath the ground.
ARK: One ring to rule them all!
CCK: Exactly. When you crash particles into each other at high speed…
ARK: There’s a kaboom? An earth shattering kaboom?
CCK: No, there’s not supposed to be, because a total vacuum is maintained in the particle collider to control the result of the impact and CERN describes the particles they work with as having energy comparable to a mosquito in flight.
ARK: So they spent 6 billion dollars to build a racetrack to crash mosquitos into each other, got it.
CCK: Ah, but when you crash mosquitos you just get a quiet splat. When you crash particles you can potentially get a Higgs Boson particle, among other things, which is what CERN did on July 4th, 2012.
ARK: I’m afraid to ask…
CCK: Be afraid, be very afraid. A Higgs Boson Particle is a non-spinning particle with mass but no electric charge or colour charge. The Higgs Boson is very unstable and decays into other particles almost as soon as it’s formed.
ARK: I hope we’re getting to the conspiracy soon, because I can hear your brain going into overdrive.
CCK: Maximum Overdrive! Higgs Boson particles can cause a ripple in the Higgs field which permeates the universe, and that ripple can cause a small pocket of space which when it collapses can create a black hole. In a particle collider that would be a teeny tiny little adorable microscopic black hole. But if any micro black hole was created by the LHC it was quickly evaporated, losing mass and energy via Hawking radiation.
ARK: Or was it?
CCK: OR WAS IT! Some people believe that the Higgs Boson particle observed in 2012 was the beginning of the end, and that it created an itsy bitsy black hole which sucked in the earth and we just haven’t realized it yet. This seems improbable based on the black hole’s tendency to cause “Spaghettification” which would involve being stretched like a piece of spaghetti, something you would think we might notice, especially since if I were stretched far enough I would finally reach my correct height to weight ratio. Which has not yet happened.
ARK: Ah…but what about the phenomenon of time slowing down as you approach the event horizon. The event horizon of a black hole is the distance from the black hole at which nothing can escape being sucked in. An outside observer who is very far away and watching the earth get sucked into the blackhole will see time slow down so much that it almost comes to a complete stop! So we’re still on our way into the black hole but since all time is slowed down, what we perceive as a minute is actually years.
CCK: So you’re saying that now when I’m 15 minutes late, I’m 15 years late?
ARK: That sounds correct.
Crypt Keeper: Apparently time doesn’t fly when you’re getting sucked into a black hole, but fruit flies love a banana! 2012 certainly wouldn’t have been the first time the Earth sucked! And unfortunately for all of humanity, it is also not the first time that scientists thought they could mess around with the natural order of things. For instance, our next story brings us to a dark and eerie place, a place shrouded in mystery a place just east of the New Jersey turnpike. the terrifying town of Ong’s Hat. Is it a ghost town or a portal to another dimension? It’s in New Jersey so that right there is pretty scary…Let’s go…
ARK: Ong's Hat is located in the New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, sometimes called the Pinelands or the Pines. The Pine Barrens is comprised of 1.1 million acres and occupies 22% of New Jersey’s land area.The Pines is home to at least 39 species of mammals, over 300 species of birds, 59 types of reptiles and amphibians, and 91 species of fish.
CCK: And possibly, the Jersey Devil.
ARK: Legend has it that the Jersey Devil was born in 1735 to the unfortunate Mrs. Leeds. After giving birth to a seemingly normal baby boy, her 13th child, the baby started to grow to an enormous size with leathery skin covered in feathers and hair. It sprouted huge dragon like wings and large horns grew from the top of its head. Claws ripped out of the tips of its fingers, and it slaughtered its mother and several of her midwives before taking out some of the other Leeds children and flying out of the chimney to stalk the pinelands to this very day. Also, it’s the mascot for Jersey’s National Hockey League team, the New Jersey Devils, a name chosen in a 1982 fan contest.
CCK: Fun! A mother devouring devil mascot!
ARK: But finishing the hat story…
CCK: The only one who will get that joke is
ARK & CCK: Hi Franny!
ARK: The origins of Ong’s Hat date back to at least 1778, when it appeared on a map of Hessian encampments.
CCK: Hessian is a term that refers to the approximately 30,000 German mercenary troops hired by the British to help them fight during the American Revolution. The troops primarily originated from the German state of Hesse-Cassel, hence the name Hessian.
ARK: Ong’s Hat is in Burlington County in the Pine Barrens, but aside from that not much else about it is agreed on. There are many versions of the origin story for the name of the location.
CCK: Either a debonair ladies’ man with the last name Ong, threw his silk hat in a tree in a fit of pique and the location around that tree was then called Ong’s Hat.
ARK: Or maybe he was a tavern owner named Ong who painted a silk hat on his sign.
CCK: Or he could have been a farmer with the last name Ong, who moved grain from his farm in Little Egg to nearby Burlington for grinding and Ong’s Hut was just a small shack he built as a resting place along the way, but over time it turned into Ong’s Hat.
ARK: Even the size of the town or whether it was ever a town is questioned. In 1936, writer, reverend and folklorist, Henry Charlton Beck wrote about Ong’s Hut in a book called, “Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey.” Beck described Ong’s Hat as a lively town with alcohol and prizefighting that served as a social center for the surrounding area, but he later recanted that description saying he had been duped by “elaborate traps” set for him by locals to mislead him about the town’s past.
CCK: Whatever it had been, it was abandoned by the 1980’s, a ghost town marked by a few crumbling foundations and a single standing structure.
ARK: And that’s when things got really weird. Ong's Hat is an example of one of the earliest internet conspiracy theories. The conspiracy began in the late 1980's,when a pamphlet started making the rounds. The pamphlet was called "Ong's Hat: Gateway to the Dimensions, a Full-Color Brochure for the Institute of Chaos Studies and Moorish Science Ashram".
CCK: it rolls off the tongue.
ARK: This pamphlet claimed that Ong's Hat was once home to secret experiments by a pair of Princeton scientists known as the Dobbs Twins. And what kind of work were they doing that required the secrecy and solitude of the Pine Barrens of New Jersey?
CCK: Jersey Devil breeding program.
ARK: Chaos studies. The brother and sister, Frank and Althea Dobbs had grown up living on a UFO-cult commune in rural Texas. The commune was founded by their father, a retired insurance salesman who was murdered by rogue disciples during a revival in California. While undergraduates at the University of Texas the siblings produced a series of equations which, they felt certain, contained the seeds of a new science they called “cognitive chaos.” They attempted to submit their theorems, as well as the theoretical and philosophical system built upon them, as a joint PhD thesis while in attendance at Princeton.
CCK: The Dobbs’ theory was that the brain itself was a “fractal universe” and that it could interface with both random and determined forces. The theorized that if a person could learn the topography of the brain and how it defines these “patterns of chaos”, then one could quote “ride with chaos”, or put another way, it would be the equivalent of how a lucid dreamer can learn to contain and direct the process of REM sleep. As far as the twins were concerned, their thesis suggested that if one could learn to harness their brain to this extent, they could access the brain’s unused capacities, repair tissue at the cellular or genetic level, which would give humankind control over diseases and even the aging process.
ARK: And how was their theory received?
CCK: They ended up in the middle of the Pine Barrens of New Jersey… how do you think it was received? There were expunged from the graduate faculty, dismissed from Princeton, and their thesis advisor threatened to report them to the FBI.
ARK: So, not great…
CCK: No. But, luckily for them, they found a place to go where they were welcomed with opened arms.
ARK: The Moorish Science Ashram! The Moorish Science Ashram was founded by a carpet salesman turned mystic scholar, Wali Fard. Fard was a devotee of The Moorish Orthodox Church of America, an offshoot of the Moorish Science Temple, which was an Islamic heretical sect, founded by a black circus magician named Noble Drew Ali in Newark, New Jersey in 1913. Fard, an American, had spent several years of his life traveling in the east, India, Persia, and Afghanistan, as part of his spiritual quest. While living in Afghanistan, he plied his trade as an Afghan carpet exporter. But, in 1978, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Fard returned home to the United States, and bought a plot of land, about 200 acres, in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, which included the sliver of land known as Ong’s Hat. It was there that he founded the Moorish Science Ashram.
CCK: When the Dobbs twins showed up to Ong’s Hat with their airstream trailer, there they would find the perfect counterparts to their research. Harold Acton, a British ex-pat, and computer scientist, who was working on an ad-hoc computer network based on his own I-Ching speculations, and Martine Kallikak, a native of the Barrens, from Chatsworth, New Jersey, a machinist, inventor, and artist.
ARK: Fun fact: Martine Kallikak’s ancestors were guinea pigs for a study in eugenics that took place in the early 1900’s at the New Jersey’s Vineland Training School for Feeble-Minded Girls and Boys. The study would be published as a book entitled: “The Kallikak Family- A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness”. By today’s standards, this book’s validity is a mess, but it was one of the first studies to be credited to linking heredity and mental illness, and in no small way, it also lended to the legend of the of the bizarre, possibly insane, probably inbred, Pine Barren backwoodspeople.
CCK: It would come to be that the Dobbs Twins, Acton, Kallikak, and Fard would found the Institute of Chaos studies. And much like chocolate and peanut butter, the scientists and the spiritual seekers on the Ashram discovered that they were two great tastes that taste better together.
ARK: Yes! Life on the Ashram became a blend of meditation, physics, alchemy, and metaphysical practices. And they turned an old barn into a make-shift laboratory hidden deep in the pines. Their main course of work within that laboratory was to try and train their minds to harness the power to manipulate the quantum underpinnings of reality itself. And one of the ways they were attempting this feat was by building something known as "the Egg". A pod that could pierce the veil between parallel universes, enabling its practitioners to actually travel to other dimensions. ***Question for CCK Here…***
CCK: Now if my New Jersey history is correct.
ARK: I mean, it's entirely based off Troma's Toxic Avenger, so I'm sure we're good.
CCK: Well, now that you mention it… according to the Gateway to the Dimensions pamphlet, the ashram was being threatened by leakage from the South Jersey Nuclear Waste Dump near Fort Dix. The only solution to the problem was to use the egg!
ARK: You can’t make an omelet…
CCK: without breaking a few eggs?
ARK: No. Just you can’t make an omelet. I’m sorry you had to find out this way.
CCK: Anyway, by this time in their history, the ashram was on the fourth-generation design of the egg, and it has resulted in them discovering the Gate, an opening that made interdimensional travel possible. On the other side of the gate, they found another Pine Barrens, similar to the one in New Jersey, but seemingly devoid of all human life. And this is where they decided to make their new home.
ARK: And now for a list of Interdimensional travel pros and cons. Pro: it was possible for inanimate matter to cross over into the new dimension, which means that the ashram members were able to move all their stuff, including their buildings, airstream trailers, and chicken coops. This also enables them to do some interdimensional shopping trips, as they are still reliant on our dimension for things like coffee and books and computers. Big ol’ con: it only works if you are a fully trained “cognitive chaote”. Even though it did not appear to work for adult “non-initiates” apparently, they did work out a way to carry young children across successfully. I’m guessing something high-tech like a potato sack lined with Reynold’s Wrap.
CCK: Wait. Do they know what happened to the adult “non-initiates” that attempted to go through the gate?
ARK: They did not mention that in their pamphlet. But, they did mention that they had visited other dimensions before deciding to settle in this parallel pine barrens. So, if I had to guess, I would say that a non-initiate could survive the travel through the gate, but without the proper training, they would not be able to set the course to land in the right place. Which means they could have ended up in any unknown terrifying dimensions, like the all-bigfoot dimension, or a dimension where the dinosaurs never went extinct, or…
CCK: Or New Jersey!! Oh, no, wait a minute…
ARK: And so it was, that all the inhabitants of Ong’s Hat just disappeared, and all the evidence that they has ever been there is now gone, eaten away by the elements and time, but perhaps something remains, the vortex through which they traveled, The Gate, and unless you’re a fully trained “cognitive chaote” that happens to stumble upon it, it could mean bad news.
CCK: Now, about this pamphlet… In the late 90’s early 2000’s, this pamphlet starts showing up online and then it gets linked to an alleged rare-book catalog called Incunabula, which supposedly compiled works that when examined together, revealed a secret scientific history of parallel-universe exploration. And while some of the books in that collection cannot be confirmed to even be real, others are very real, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1987, James Gleick’s Chaos: Making a New Science.
ARK: And as more and more seekers and internet sleuths began looking into the legend of Ong’s Hat, there were more and more reports of people being affected by it. According to Michael Kinsella, a professor at Central Michigan University Mount Pleasant and author of “Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat” people were reporting quote “various synchronicities, strange dreams, unusual visual perceptions, and shifts in reality monitoring,”.
CCK: Enter Joseph Matheny… the man that created the legend of Ong’s Hat. Matheny along with a few of his friends, started creating fake documents, fake radio show appearances, internet message board posts, and yes, even that pamphlet, all as part of an elaborate game and exercise in collective storytelling online. Matheny even posed as a fellow internet investigator in order to introduce new hints, and chapters and discoveries to the legend.
ARK: And while the intent was just to have a little fun, present people with a mystery to try and solve, it started to go out of control. There were people that took it seriously, and some that had a harder time than most separating fact from fiction. As a result, Matheny began to receive a lot of harassment online causing him to finally pull the plug on the experiment. Although, even after that, there are still some people that refuse to believe it was all a hoax or just a game. And like we learned in our Men in Black episode, sometimes just the thought of something can bring it into reality, a tulpa, and everytime you get someone to think about that tulpa, obsess about that tulpa, visualize that tulpa, then you feed that tulpa, making it more solid and more real. So, what kind of tulpa sits out in the middle of the dark, desolate woods? How many times has it fed on the intrepid investigators who believed the story about Ong’s Hat? How many have ventured out amongst the pines to find the gate, never to be heard from again?
CRYPT KEEPER: Anytime you listeners want to come visit me at my Pine Barrens timeshare, just drop on by… what could possibly go Ong?! Speaking of crappy puns…there’s a rumbly in my tumbly and it might be GMO diarrhea…
ARK: Agggh! Now that is scary…
CCK: E.Coli is short for Escherichia (Escher-Rickia) coli, which are a type of bacteria that live in the intestines of healthy people and animals. Most strains of E. coli are harmless but a few can cause severe food poisoning with stomach cramps, bloody diarrhea and vomiting. Exposure to E. coli is usually from contaminated water or food, especially raw vegetables, romaine I’m looking at you, and undercooked ground beef.
ARK: In October of 2015, multiple reports of E. Coli induced illnesses linked to Chipotle began to emerge. By January 2016, 60 people had become ill with E.coli due to consumption of Chipotle, apparently linked to two different outbreaks. 22 people were hospitalized as a result though there were no deaths. State and local health officials as well as the Chipotle corporation itself searched for the source of the contamination and were not able to locate it. Similar outbreaks in five other high-profile cases were able to quickly identify the origin of the e.coli, though according to the Centers for Disease Control exact sources are not found in about 50% of cases in restaurants.
CCK: What could be identified is that the two different O26 strains of E.coli plaguing the intestines of burrito lovers in eleven different states were rare, from the CDC site: Public health investigators used the PulseNet system to identify illnesses that were part of the outbreaks. PulseNet, the national subtyping network of public health and food regulatory agency laboratories, is coordinated by CDC. DNA fingerprinting is performed on E. coli bacteria isolated from ill people by using a technique called pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, or PFGE. PulseNet manages a national database of these DNA fingerprints to identify possible outbreaks. Two different, rare DNA fingerprints of STEC O26 were included in these investigations. Investigators also used whole genome sequencing (WGS), an advanced laboratory technique, to get more detailed information about the DNA fingerprints of the two STEC O26 strains that caused illness.
ARK: Because of the rarity of the E.Coli strains involved, conspiracy theories began to arise about whether the bacteria had been planted by a cabal of the purveyors of Frankenstein foods, AKA Genetically Modified Organisms.
CCK: Sister, why are you always bad mouthing the people who are going to help me realize my dream of eating a grape the size of my head?
ARK: A genetically modified organism is one that contains DNA which has been altered using genetic engineering. Genetic modification through selective breeding and cross breeding, think puggles, has been around for centuries, but the ability to directly modify genes allowed changes to occur at warp speed. The first genetically engineered plants created for human consumption were developed in the mid-1990s. Now, almost 90 percent of the corn, soybeans, and sugar beets available for purchase are genetically modified. Genetically engineered crops are designed to yield larger crops, last longer and are resistant to diseases and pests.
CCK: Two part question, are they resistant to pests because the pests know that grapes the size of my head are suspicious? And b, what does this have to do with fast food?
ARK: How should I know, I’m not an entomologist, and two, it’s FAST CASUAL, not fast food.
CCK: Are you working for a cabal of purveyors of overpriced fast food?
ARK: No comment. But what it has to do with Chipotle is they have been vociferous critics of GMO foods. In 2013, Chipotle began labeling all menu items that contained GMO’s. Then in April of 2015, Chipotle became the first major restaurant chain in the United States to remove all GMO ingredients from their food.
CCK: A report from the National Academies of Science released in 2016 stated: Genetically engineered crops are safe for humans and animals to eat and have not caused increases in cancer, obesity, gastrointestinal illnesses, kidney disease, autism or allergies. Genetically engineered crops are safe for humans and animals to eat and have not caused increases in cancer, obesity, gastrointestinal illnesses, kidney disease, autism or allergies.
ARK: But on the other hand, GMO’s are developed and sold by the world’s largest chemical companies, you know, the people who murdered the bees, so it’s not like they necessarily have their consumer’s best interests in mind. Also, if you’re allergic to shellfish and suddenly your tomatoes have lobster DNA, it seems like there may be potential for GMO’s to increase allergic reactions.
CCK: If nothing else, GMO’s do have the potential to kill independent farmers. Genetically modified seeds are patented and to purchase them, farmers must purchase them from the GMO seed manufacturer. Monsanto, which was bought in 2016 by Bayer, the people who brought you Heroin, was at that time renamed to Sauget, and they control the majority of the GMO seed market. Sauget prohibits farmers from saving seeds or selling them to other growers. Independent farmers whose farms are near GMO crops on neighboring farms, have sometimes had their crops contaminated by the GMO strains and been forced to pay patent fees or risk being sued.
ARK: Ultimately, it isn’t too difficult to believe that a company that sues small farmers who are unfortunate enough to have GMO seeds blow into their farms, might want to apply some pressure to the restaurant chain calling out their products.
CCK: It pains me to bring this up, because I never want to be on the same side of an argument as the artist formerly known as Monsanto, but in 2020, Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. ended up paying 25 million dollars to resolve criminal charges related to foodborne illness outbreaks in their restaurants from 2015 through 2018. In addition to E.Coli, in 2015 and 2017, Chipotle had norovirus incidents that sickened over 300 people.
ARK: Norovirus is an extremely contagious virus that causes vomiting and diarrhea and is transmitted through contact with even a few virus particles. People with norovirus can shed billions of the virus particles. In at least two of the Chipotle outbreaks, the norovirus was traced back to ill employees who were handling food while sick. In one of those cases the outbreak was the result of a sick apprentice manager who was ordered to keep working even after vomiting in the restaurant. That same employee also helped package a catering order for a Boston College basketball team, and basketballs weren’t the only thing they were dribbling after that.
CCK: Hilarious, but eww. In 2018, there was also an outbreak of Clostridium perfringens in an Ohio Chipotle which made 600 people ill. Clostridium perfringens is a bacteria and one of the most common causes of foodborne illness. The CDC estimates that there are around 1 million cases of food poisoning associated with this virus in the United States every year. C. perfringens is found on raw meat and poultry, in the intestines of animals, and in the environment where those animals graze.
ARK: So maybe a mustachioed GMO operative was not responsible for sprinkling E. Coli into the sofritas and it really was just food safety issues at work. As part of that 25 million dollar settlement, Chipotle also spent many more millions of dollars to implement new food safety programs for all of their restaurants.
Crypt Keeper: I guess now we know why the guaca-coli is extra! Enough of this shitty content, let’s talk about something cooler. Downright icy in fact… It is often said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions… which I’ll have you know is not true, my driveway is paved with rustic slab and the skullcaps of my enemies! But our next story is about a seemingly good deed possibly done for a very, very bad man.
CCK: In the Summer of 2014, you couldn’t throw a stone without hitting someone making a video of themselves performing a certain activity that had gone viral on social media.
ARK: Planking?
CCK: Nope. Something even more painful. It was known as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. ALS stands for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and is more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, after the New York Yankees’ first baseman that was afflicted with the disease that would end his life just about 3 years after his diagnosis. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was co-founded by Pat Quinn and Peter Frates, two ALS activists, and it encouraged participants to be filmed having a bucket of ice water dumped on their heads, and then nominating others to do the same. If the nominee did not comply within 24 hours, or they opted to forfeit, they would do so by way of making a charitable contribution to the ALS Association in the United States or the Neurone Disease Association in the UK.
ARK: By 2015, it had gone viral for sure. Everywhere you turned, people were dumping buckets of ice on themselves in support of ALS sufferers. And like all viruses as soon as the celebrities got involved, it became untreatable by normal antibiotics! Everyone from Justin Bieber, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Beyonce, Russell Crowe, Martha Stewart, Dr. Dre, Tom Cruise, Tiger Woods, former president, George W. Bush, and of course, America’s Sweetheart, Vin Diesel.
CCK: … …
ARK: I think you mean… when did this become SATAN world?!
CCK: Yeah. That’s what I meant.
ARK: Because you see… there is a theory that this seemingly silly stunt was not about raising awareness about a deadly disease and was actually a satanic ritual in disguise!
CCK: AAah, Satan… you’ve done it again! Between the Grammy’s and Superbowl Half-time shows, I don’t see how he finds the time for these creative endeavors.
ARK: This theory was originally posited, I believe, by Evangelist Anita Fuentes on her YouTube page; a video that is no longer available. But the theory really took off when a journalist, ahem, Selena Owens, wrote a post for WorldNetDaily.com, sharing and advocating for this theory as well. According to Owens, the act of dumping water on one’s head is correlated with the Christian baptism ceremony. So, by performing this action outside the holy boundaries, you’re actually baptizing your soul for Satan.
CCK: So, she thinks that if it’s not a priest pouring water over your head in the name of Jesus, then you’re baptizing your soul for Satan?
ARK: Yes.
CCK: This person must go through some shit when she needs to take a shower!
ARK: Well, part of the bigger problem with this ritual is that it is led by none other than the quote “cultic god Oprah”. Because in Winfrey’s ice bucket challenge, she gave her writers the day off and the only thing she could think of saying minutes before having ice cold water dumped on her head was “In the name of ALS and the Ice Bucket Challenge…”.
CCK: I see… and since Christians often pray “in the name of Jesus” or “In Jesus’s name”.
ARK: Owens was also clutching her rosary beads over Lady GaGa’s ALS Ice Bucket challenge which was of course very GaGa-esque involving a black leotard, black lips, and an ornate silver bowl to pour the water over herself. Apparently, it’s all very Pagan.
CCK: Well, yeah, considering that ancient civilizations were doing some form of water purification rituals way before there were even Christians, it is very Pagan… even when it’s done in the name of Jesus.
ARK: The other thing that Owens points to as being a sign that this challenge was all about the devil is a terrible and I admit, weird tragedy that befell an ASL activist and supporter, although, not a co-founder of the challenge, as Owens claims.
CCK: Corey Griffin, was a friend of one of the Ice Bucket Challenge co-founders, Pete Frates, and he often was very involved in helping raise money for the ALS cause. On August 16th, 2014, just hours after leaving an ALS fundraiser, Griffin dove off a building at Straight Wharf in Nantucket and into the water. Reports were that initially after jumping into the water, Griffin floated to the surface but then he went under a second time and did not resurface. He was just 27-years-old.
ARK: I get that this death is odd and tragic and premature, but so were the deaths of the two founders of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, Pat Quinn and Peter Frates, both men lost their battles with ALS. Quinn at the age of 37 and Frates at 34. And because those two men died so young and suffered with this disease, the only real take away I have from this whole conspiracy is that Satan has done more to eradicate ALS than God has… Can I get an Amen?
CCK: You can get a "Hail, Satan" 'cause you are correct! An independent research organization found that the donations that resulted from the 2014 ALS Ice Bucket Challenge increased the annual funding for The ALS by 187 percent! At least as of 2019, those additional funds were directly responsible in the discovery of five new genes connected to ALS, it funded new clinical trials to test potential treatments, it invested in more researchers, and it was able to increase the number of certified treatment centers.
Crypt Keeper: Let’s wrap this episode up with something sweet. Perhaps an everlasting Gobstopper would hit the spot, nothing scary about that is there, you can always trust the person handing out free candy? Or can you…Sorry to break this to you, listeners, but that beloved tale of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is really just sugar coated Silence of the Lambs. Let me introduce you to Willie Wonka, serial killer. <evil laugh>
CCK: Oompa Loopa, Loompity Doo, I’ve got another question for you. Is Willie Wonka evil?
ARK: The new Timothee Chalamet Wonka? You do not want to know what he’s going to do to that giant peach…
CCK: Err…no, I meant the beloved older Wonka character from the 1964 Roald Dahl novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the two subsequent movie re-imaginings, The 1971 movie, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory staring Gene Wilder and 2005's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp.
ARK: There was something vaguely sinister about Wonka, and a 2014 Reddit thread from poster, Showerthoughts postulated that this is because Wonka was murdering the children who came in for the factory tour and that the children themselves represented the 7 deadly sins.
CCK: Reddit is truly a world of pure imagination! Also, aren’t there only five kids?
ARK: Yes, August Gloop, gluttony, drowned in chocolate. Violet Beauregard, record holder for chewing a single piece of gum for the longest amount of time, pride. Verruca Salt, greed, obviously.
CCK: I want the world, I want the WHOLE world!
ARK: Mike Teevee, the OG couch potato and representative of sloth and sweet Charlie Bucket, lust.
CCK: Wait…what? Charlie? Charlie is the only good one.
ARK: Ah but is he? He keeps track of how many golden tickets have been found and obsessively hopes that he will find one. That sounds like Lust to me.
CCK: I mean, he’s a ten year old economic provider and health care worker for four ancient grandparents, lust seems a bit harsh. And what about Envy?
ARK: Grandpa Joe. He’s so jealous that Charlie gets to go to the Chocolate Factory that he gets out of bed for the first time in 20 years…
CCK: At the very least Grandpa Joe is a jerk for making everyone wait on him hand and foot when he was capable of getting out the bed.
ARK: And Willie Wonka…is wrath!
CCK: That one actually does kind of track. Not a speck of light is showing, So the danger must be growing, Are the fires of Hell a-glowing, Is the grisly reaper mowing?
ARK: And is that grisly reaper Wonka? I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure that none of those kids would have survived their <cough cough>accidents. Augustus was submerged then sucked into a vacuum tube, which isn’t really conducive to successful ingestion of oxygen. Veruca Salt, is dropped some distance onto a pile of bad eggs, AKA rocks, or maybe actual eggs, but not really a good cushion after a long fall. Violet is first inflated then squeezed to death, and Mike Teevee probably wouldn’t survive the taffy pull.
CCK: I’m also not a doctor, but I see your point…But he didn’t force the children to make bad decisions, or did he?
ARK: Or did he!
CCK: Haven’t we already used that joke this episode?
ARK: Wonka masterfully profiled the children to know exactly what temptation they could not resist. And Charlie and Grandpa only escaped death in the bubble room because of Grandpa’s belching.
CCK: After each of the children are dispatched, Wonka instructs the Oompa Loompas to remove the parent of his victims and we don’t actually hear what his instructions are, so maybe the Candy Man can, murder a bunch of people.
ARK: But only in the Gene Wilder version. In the Johnny Depp and book version, the other children are seen at the end.
Crypt Keeper: There it is boils and ghouls… Your spooky October Paranoid Style Conspiracy Creep Show! There are always more creepy conspiracies to be discovered… just keep your eyes peeled…or the Crypt Keeper may have to peel them for you! Sleep tight, Kiddies!