QAA Podcast

Are those “small business owners” selling trinkets on Tik Tok actually real? Are those ripped gay hunks on Twitter just AI? Do people even care about the distinction between “fake” and “real” in the content they see online?

In this episode we dive into the various ways people are deploying AI entities on social media: from the scammy, to the benign, to the sadistic and abusive. Travis unpacks the recent controversy over an Australian influencer who was caught using AI to promote her dubious charity as well the strange trend of videos of fake belt buckle makers.

Later the boys are joined by Ej Dickson, senior culture writer at WIRED and author of One Bad Mother: In Praise of Psycho Housewives, Stage Parents, Momfluencers, and Other Women We Love to Hate. Dickson shares the perspective she’s gained on reporting on influencer culture, parasocial relationships, and AI manipulation.

Along the way the crew ponders whether humanity will actually have to lose a war to AI in order to get plugged into an illusory Matrix-like world or if people will walk into it willingly so long as they can interact with their favorite synthetic influencers.

EJ Dickson on Twitter
https://x.com/ejdickson?s=20

EJ Dickson on Bluesky
https://bsky.app/profile/ejdickson.bsky.social

One Bad Mother: In Praise of Psycho Housewives, Stage Parents, Momfluencers, and Other Women We Love to Hate By Ej Dickson
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/One-Bad-Mother/Ej-Dickson/9781668051115

SOURCES

This Scammer Used an AI-Generated MAGA Girl to Grift ‘Super Dumb’ Men
https://www.wired.com/story/ai-generated-maga-girls/

Australian influencer Lily Jay’s tangled web of AI manipulation
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-05/lily-jay-foundation-posts-ai-generated-misleading-videos/106866422

AI grifters are creating fake Black people to sell Shein junk
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/938844/ai-tiktok-shop-blackface-shein-dropshipping

Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa

Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media! All episodes of Spectral Voyager Season 2 are out now! Binge the entirety of Truly Tradly Deeply by Annie Kelly and Megan Kelly as well as Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows: cursedmedia.net

Produced by Liv Agar & Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe and Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com)

qaapodcast.com

QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

POV: You’re the world’s richest man, clicking the POST button on the platform you own. You’ve just shared an inconceivably terrible and violently bigoted film to your 240 million followers, catapulting what would’ve been a forgotten flop to the top of the streaming charts. The film is “Citizen Vigilante”, featuring Armie Hammer’s “comeback” role where he executes migrants. It’s directed by the prolifically terrible Uwe Boll, who once mercilessly pummeled his harshest critics in a boxing ring. For our latest movie night, Brad forced co-hosts Live, Annie, and Jake to hate-watch this travesty, enduring the pain so you don’t have to. Although, Jake genuinely enjoyed covering Boll’s endless video game adaptations, none of which he’s actually seen.

Brad:
https://x.com/LoveAndSaucers
https://www.instagram.com/bradwtf/
https://lnk.bio/extrasensory

Liv:
Livagar.com
https://www.twitch.tv/livagar
https://bsky.app/profile/livagar.bsky.social

Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa

Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media! All episodes of Spectral Voyager Season 2 are out now! Binge the entirety of Truly Tradly Deeply by Annie Kelly and Megan Kelly as well as Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows: cursedmedia.net

Produced by Liv Agar & Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe and Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com)

qaapodcast.com

QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

John Murray Spear and his followers have built their “mechanical messiah.” There’s just one problem: it won’t move.

In the conclusion to Spear’s excellent adventure, the spirit of Benjamin Franklin guides the “Motorists” through increasingly elaborate attempts to bring the “Electrical Infant” to life. These include a copper-and-zinc wizard suit, a proposed worldwide network of telepathic transmission towers, powdered metals, personal magnetism, soul blending, and the spiritual labor of medium Sarah Newton., newspapers erupt, and P.T. Barnum raises the obvious question: who is the father?

The machine finally twitches, but many, including P.T. Barnum, are less than impressed. Jack follows the New Motor’s journey through “wombific” processes, free-love theology, public scandal, exile, and its alleged destruction by a gang of young Baptists. Spear moves on to spirit-designed sewing machines, an electrically powered ship modeled after a duck, and a new doctrine of “True Marriage.” Jack also digs into the 2019 claim that the long-lost Mechanical Messiah had been discovered in a Colorado attic and the professional hoax engineer behind the story.

Subscribe for $5 a month to unlock access this episode and over 300 premium episodes, plus get one premium episode for every free episode we release in the future:

https://patreon.com/qanonanonymous

Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media! All episodes of Spectral Voyager Season 2 are out now! Binge the entirety of Truly Tradly Deeply by Annie Kelly and Megan Kelly as well as Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows:

https://cursedmedia.net

Produced by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe and Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)

https://qaapodcast.com

QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

Jack LaRoche and Trey Grace spent Fourth of July weekend inside Intercessors for America’s “Rededicate America” event at the Museum of the Bible, and they tell Travis, Liv, and Jake all about it.

Intercessors for America (IFA) describes its own organizing model as “News. Prayer. Action.” In practice, it involves prophecy about the destiny of the United States, political prayer, and “spiritual warfare.”

At the sold-out two-day gathering, Jack and Trey encounter “prophetic elder” Dutch Sheets, spiritual warrior Cindy Jacobs, one-man performer Rich Swingle, and American Idol finalist Danny Gokey. What does the event reveal about the current state of Christian dominionism, anti-CRT school board panic, anti-Sharia politics, covenant theology, vaccine weirdness, and the New Apostolic Reformation-adjacent prophetic scene? It turns out that self-described modern prophets are increasingly anxious about Trump’s rapid aging and the lack of young people in their movement.

Jack LaRoche
https://www.jacklaroche.com/

Trey Grace on Bluesky
https://bsky.app/profile/treygrace.bsky.social

Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa

Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media! All episodes of Spectral Voyager Season 2 are out now! Binge the entirety of Truly Tradly Deeply by Annie Kelly and Megan Kelly as well as Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows: cursedmedia.net

Produced by Liv Agar & Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe and Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com)

qaapodcast.com

QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

This week, Jack begins the strange saga of John Murray Spear: Universalist preacher, abolitionist, prison reformer, anti-death-penalty agitator, spiritual medium, and eventual would-be midwife to a “mechanical messiah.”

Before Spear tried to build the “New Motor” (a living machine meant to channel divine electricity and inaugurate a new age) he spent decades pursuing radical reform in 19th-century New England. Jack traces Spear’s working-class childhood, his years in the Universalist movement, his “missions of love” to prisoners and the poor, his work against capital punishment, his involvement with abolitionism and the Underground Railroad, and the mob beating that nearly killed him in Portland.

Then things get weirder. Enter the unfortunately-named Andrew Jackson Davis, Emanuel Swedenborg, the Fox Sisters, mesmeric trances, automatic writing, spirit healing, Benjamin Franklin from beyond the grave, psychometry, sulfur springs, and the “Association of Electricizers.” By the end of Part 1 of our story, Spear has been selected by a committee of dead reformers, scientists, and Founding Fathers to help remake the world through electricity, spirit communication, and one very important machine in a tower in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Next week: Jack tells the tale of Spear’s mechanical messiah.

Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa

Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media! All episodes of Spectral Voyager Season 2 are out now! Binge the entirety of Truly Tradly Deeply by Annie Kelly and Megan Kelly as well as Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows: cursedmedia.net

Produced by Liv Agar & Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe and Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com)

qaapodcast.com

QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.