The research starts from the following questions: how much of the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories is generated by their compliance to certain narrative schemes? What happens when the legitimate need to generate counter-narratives gets trapped in other kinds of templates?
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<spanclass="title">When you might go astray</span> deals with these questions by exploring the dangers of conspiracy theories and their entanglement with narrative schemes transforming their believers into heroes on a quest. <br>
The project is divided into two parts: a<ahref="park.html"target="_blank">game</a>, where the player is asked to undertake a journey, and an <ahref="thesis.html"target="_blank">essay</a>, examining conspiratorial narratives through the lenses of the mono-myth.
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Half of this research is translated into the<ahref="park.html">game</a> you just played, the other half takes the shape of an essay. You can read it <ahref="thesis.html">here</a>, from top to bottom, or you can reach some of its parts by following the clues distributed in this page. <br>
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<spanclass="title">When you might go astray</span> has been developed by <ahref="https://www.annasandri.com/"target="_blank">Anna Sandri</a> in the context of the <ahref="https://www.pzwart.nl/experimental-publishing/"target="_blank">Experimental Publishing</a> master course, Piet Zwart Institute (NL).
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@ -181,10 +181,11 @@
</div>
<br><br><br><divclass="line2"></div>
<divclass="mid_text blur">
<spanstyle="-webkit-padding-start: 11vw;">After</span> you met Amanda (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/spring_river/amanda.gif">), you probably found yourself a bit unsettled. Was everything a lie?
How could you make such an error (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/sad.gif">) of judgment?
I (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/oracle.gif">)can't really say, I suppose you only took this turn (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/horse.gif">) for the sake of it. It really didn't matter why, and most importantly, you really didn't care if the signals (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/explore2.gif">) you were grasping were real or illusionary, if the people you met along the way were lying to you or not.
I am also suggesting is that what happened can be considered unimportant: it only served the purpose of distracting yourself and giving you with temporary glimpses of possible adventures (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/fiction.gif">). If I were you, I want bother too much to understand what these symbols (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/rept.gif">) and characters (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/walk.gif">) meant. As far as I am concerned, as right or wrong they can be, hidden in this corner, they are not hurting anyone.
<spanstyle="-webkit-padding-start: 11vw;">After</span> you met Amanda (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/spring_river/amanda.gif">), you probably found yourself a bit unsettled. Was everything a lie? How could you make such an error of judgment (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/sad.gif">) ? I (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/oracle.gif">) can't really say, I have the impression you took this turn (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/horse.gif">) without thinking it thoroughly, probably comforted by the fact that the world (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/outer.gif">) you just explored (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/explore2.gif">) seems to exist only in a limited number of browser tabs.
This is why I am guessing that for you, <spanid="player_name"></span> ( <imgclass="avatar inText"src=""> ), it was not so important to understand if the signals (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/signal.gif">) you were getting from your surroundings were real or illusionary. Or if the people you met along the way were lying to you.
If you considered what happened here really insignificant I would understand: in this place (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/ball.gif">), whatever wrong turn you might have taken was not affecting anything but you.
As well, I do think that you are probably not the kind of person that is prone to be fooled by such silly clues in the outer world. Forgive me if you got this impression from me (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/oracle.gif">).
I wanted to leave you with something to think about when you'll be outside (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/globe.gif">) again: it seems there are some spaces, or moments, in the head of the players (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/believer.gif">), when certain laws can be entirely suspended, while all is left is something that pushes you to abandon the position of common venturer (<imgclass="inText"src="imgs/avatars/hero3.gif">), no matter how far that will bring you.
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@ -207,6 +208,10 @@ var img = document.createElement("img");
window.onload = function (){
//remembers that you reached the end of the game
window.localStorage.setItem("final","opened");
console.log ("final:",localStorage.final)
//get player avatar
if (localStorage.myavatar === "imgs/avatars/avatar1.gif" ) {
hello <spanid="player_name"></span>, it seems you have already been here. You can come back how many times you want but you should be aware that the oracle tends to remember everything you did in the past. <br> You can <buttonid="no_delete"class="button_memory">carry on anyways</button> or you can <buttonid="delete"class="button_memory">clean your history</button> in case you are looking for a fresh start.
Hello <spanid="player_name"></span> . It's Saturday morning. You are at the park waiting for your friend Amanda. She seems to be really late.
It's Saturday morning. You are at the park waiting for your friend Amanda. She seems to be really late.
You spot a copy of today's newspaper on the bench close to you: maybe you want to give it a read. You can also <buttononclick="location.href='park_N_clues.html';"><spanclass="button_text">go for a little walk</span></button> or just <buttonclass="wait_for_amanda"><spanclass="button_text">wait for Amanda</span></button>.
@ -153,10 +153,10 @@ discussion. They were sharing their insights on China's supposed plan to destroy
<p>The QAnon conspiracy originated in 2017 on the image-board website 4chan, where a user named "Q Clearance Patriot"<sup>2</sup> started to drop some alleged government secrets, claiming to be a high-level federal administrator. Q's messages, also known as "crumbs", reveal nonsense clues that seem to be open to endless interpretations. These lasts are elaborated by Q followers, named "bakers". Some of them believing Q to be an actual spy, some others just participating in the interactive quest for the sake of trolling.</p>
<pclass="image_cap1">A frame from the TV show V figuring one of the Visitors revealing his reptilian appearance </em></p>
<p>An alleged spy who signs their messages as Q is one of the main characters of a novel --also called <em>Q</em>-- written in 1999 by four members of the Italian collective of artists and activists Luther Blissett, active today under the name of Wu Ming. The historical novel is set in Europe, during the years of the Protestant Reformation. In this turbulent context, a spy of the Roman Catholic Church is infiltrating groups of radical reformers who are hostile to both clergy and feudal authority. From there, this emissary reports to the Catholic establishment the stories of a maverick of a hundred names. His letters are signed Q like Qoèlet (from Hebrew קֹהֶלֶת‎): the bible's book of Ecclesiastes.</p>
<pclass="image_cap1">Fig. 8:"Omnia sunt communia, figli di cane!"</em></p>
<pclass="image_cap2">A graffiti in Florence carrying a quote from Luther Blissett's Q. The first part of the sentence is a Latin expression meaning "all things in common" attributed to medieval theologist Thomas Aquinas. The latter, as one of the most influential philosophers and theologists in Christian philosophy, discussed in one of his treatises the concept of private property. While advocating for its legitimization for commercial purposes, he supported the option of discarding it in case of necessity (from Latin "In extrema necessitate Omnia sunt communia"). The sentence was re-purposed as a battle cry during the German Peasants' War described in Q.</span></p>
<p>An alleged spy who signs their messages as Q is one of the main characters of a novel --also called <em>Q</em>-- written in 1999 by four members of the Italian collective of artists and activists Luther Blissett, active today under the name of Wu Ming. The historical novel is set in Europe, during the years of the Protestant Reformation. In this turbulent context, a spy of the Roman Catholic Church is infiltrating groups of radical reformers who are hostile to both clergy and feudal authority. From there, this emissary reports to the Catholic establishment the stories of a maverick of a hundred names. His letters are signed Q like Qoèlet (from Hebrew קֹהֶלֶת‎): the bible's book of Ecclesiastes.</p>
<p>The Luther Blissett collective started its activity in the nineties in the Italian city of Bologna. Since then, its name has been used to claim several pranks and media hoaxes as well as to run campaigns for victims of censorship and repression. One of these victims was Marco Dimitri, the leader of the neopagan association "Bambini di Satana" (in English Satan's Children). Following the wave of satanic hysteria generated by cases like the McMartin preschool trial, Dimitri was arrested on the charges of tomb violation, desecration of a corpse, and sexual assault. The press insisted on depicting him as a monster, drawing a comparison between Dimitri's unproved crimes and Mafia's atrocities. Ultimately, as in the trial mentioned above, all the accusations ended up being contrived. Not only were Satan's Children the victims of a conspiracy theory but also of the lack of fact-checking carried out by local and national media (Blissett, 2000) <sup>3</sup>. In this blind environment, Luther Blissett pursued a counter-investigation that exposed the failures of the press: in 2001 the result of the inquiry was translated into the book <em>Lasciate che i bimbi</em>. Twenty years later, with its belief in a child-murdering elite, QAnon resurrected the long-lasting myth of Satanic Ritual Abuse. </p>
<p>When QAnon came out of its 4chan niche, readers and fans of Luther Blissett's novel contacted the collective, exposing the similarities with their work and the new movement that was getting out of cyberspace, incorporating other sex trafficking fantasies like the 2016 Pizzagate. The collective dug into the issue and entered the debate around the origins of the conspiracy theory. The media as well followed the trail: is QAnon a leftist hoax? (Broderick, 2018). Nobody knows for sure. Yet the two stories can easily be placed in relation to each other. </p>
*anna*
4 years ago
