Category Archives: Ong’s Hat

Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

Joseph Matheny Appears on How Conspiracy Theories Become Violent | Truth Hurts | VICE

https://video.vice.com/en_uk/video/vice-how-conspiracy-theories-become-violent/5fcfa4408b7fc464401542c3?jwsource=cl

I made an appearance on VICE’s Truth Hurts series discussing the danger of right-wing conspiracy cults and why this is not a new phenomenon.

 

 

What’s the difference between someone who’s into conspiracy theories and someone who’s so influenced by them they become a mass shooter? From white supremacist Anders Breivik to jihadist Tamerlan Tsarneav, some of the perpetrators of the worst acts of mass killing around the world have been enthralled by certain conspiracy theories. In this episode of Truth Hurts, we look at the tipping point in the conspiracist mindset that can turn people violent.

Watch more from this series:

Where Conspiracy Theorists Steal Their Ideas From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4hpedzjQZ8

The Most Dangerous Conspiracy Theory in the World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7o3bVInA2A

Alternate Reality Game, Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

Coming Soon: Highly Strange

We’re producing our first original on high strangeness. In it we explore the psyche of “strange” through the stories of three people in highly strange situations.

Season One – “Information Golem” looks at the life of Joseph Matheny as he dreams up what perhaps becomes the world’s first online ARG (Alternative Reality Game) known as Ong’s Hat. Launched in the 90’s as an innocent social experiment around story and information, things quickly went left of field. The oddities that surrounded Ong’s Hat are curiosities Joseph still struggles to understand to this day. Joseph has gotten alot of attention lately from the press because of the Quanon craziness and White House uprising. More recently he was featured on Slate Magazine’s Decoder Ring series. Also there’s news of a upcoming Netflix feature on conspiracy creation he’ll appear in. His story touches on the issues that seem to dovetail at the volcanic crossroads where personality and mental health meets randomness and free information. Lots of unruly yet relevant questions get born there.

https://api.spreaker.com/download/episode/43151026/trailer_02012021_x1.mp3?_=1

Listen to “Highly Strange” on Spreaker.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/41996383

 

Alternate Reality Game, Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

The Mystery of Ong’s Hat – 3V Off The Books

Today the gang is diving into one of the OG internet conspiracy theories. The mystery of Ong’s Hat. But the real mystery is why did the gang decide to record this drunk? The world may never know.

https://jmatheny.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/ongshat_offthebooks.mp3?_=2

LINK TO SHOW: https://soundcloud.com/3vpodcast/the-mystery-of-ongs-hat-3v-off-the-books

Get your “It’s Time for Science” shirt at 3vpodcast.com also be sure to follow us on all the socials @3VPodcast!

Thanks for listening! If you liked this episode be sure to leave us a five star (or not) review! Also if you have any feedback or ideas for future episodes be sure to hit us up! Thanks again and have a kickass day!paranormalPodcasttrue crime3v podcaongsinternet mysteryongmysteryComedydrunkconstheoryconspiracy theoryThe Mystery of Ong’s Hat – 3V Off The Books by 3V Podcast is licensed under a  Creative Commons License.

Alternate Reality Game, Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

Ong’s Hat and the construction of a suspicious model reader

It’s refreshing to see someone make an attempt to understand what I was trying to do with Ong’s Hat and it’s encouraging to see them get it mostly right. Too many so-called journalists have focused on the more sensationalist aspects of my attempt, in the early days of the Internet, at an avant-garde art installation that was not constrained by space and time.

In this paper, I have brought together concepts from media studies and semiotics of interpretation in an attempt to analyze a complex media phenomenon and its unforeseen persuasive power. This analysis could be built upon to analyze similar phenomena such as conspiracy theories and fake news.

Link to the full paper: https://letreraria.com/2019/01/13/ongs-hat-and-the-construction-of-a-suspicious-model-reader/

Alternate Reality Game, Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

Did An Alternate Reality Game Gone Wrong Predict The Rise of QAnon?

https://youtu.be/brijcd-8oWE

 

In this fragment of SCHISM we interview the creator of ‘Ong’s Hat’, the first Alternate Reality Game, and ask what his experiences can teach us about the rise of QAnon. Is it possible that the ability to co-create and distribute our own narratives about reality could be altering its basic fabric? And has Noam Chomsky’s concept of ‘manufactured consent’ produced by centralized authority and corporate media now been outmoded by a new era of ‘manufactured dissent’, powered by networks, meme culture and supercharged shitposting?

LINK: https://youtu.be/brijcd-8oWE

Episode sponsored by Joystream, the video platform DAO: https://joystream.org
 
Support us on Patreon https://patreon.com/schismfilm
 
Credits, references & more http://schism.film/illusorytruths
 
Help share this episode, earn goodies: http://mop.to/schism3
 
 
 
 
Alternate Reality Game, Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

More Gunderson, Finders, QAnon, et. al

Back by popular demand, this episode features more dirt on Ted Gunderson. It starts out pretty straightforward, with digital forensic investigator Ed Opperman talking about his experience with the disgraced former FBI agent. Then public satanist Lucien Greaves talks a bit about his investigations into the Satanic Panic, including his experiences with ol’ Ted. Finally, Joseph Matheny comes on for a wide-ranging chat about QAnon, the Finders as metaprogramming, the gameplay-theater-ceremonial magick nexus, and more! Things start out pretty down-to-earth, but by the end of the episode, there is plenty of esoterica for you to chew on. Get ready to have your mind blown, then press play…

link to show: https://anchor.fm/failedstateupdate/episodes/25–More-Gunderson–Finders–QAnon–et–al-elcm3k/a-a3k0etn

But for chrissake, if you haven’t listened to the previous episode (24), please be sure to, so you don’t get too lost…

Grey Faction (Lucien Greaves) website: https://greyfaction.org/

Lucien Greaves on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucienGreaves

Joseph Matheny website: https://josephmatheny.com/

Joseph Matheny on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ongshat1

Joseph L. Flatley website: https://www.lennyflatley.net

Joseph L. Flatley on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennyflatley

Failed State Update Newsletter: https://lennyflatley.substack.com

Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

Red Pages Podcast: Episode 154: Chatting with Joseph Matheny

https://archive.org/download/rpp-20-09-29/RPP20-09-29.mp3?_=3

Justin sits down to talk with ARG pioneer Joseph Matheny about politics, conspiracy theories, games and the future of America.

Haps Discussed: Independent art production, marginal voices in marginal spaces, propaganda, misinformation, QAnon, social media, owning your data, Rockefeller Republicans

Books Discussed: Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski

Games Discussed: Ong’s Hat, Majestic, Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Myst


Links
Paralax Views Podcast episode Adrian Hon: What ARGs Can Teach Us About QAnon Conspirituality Podcast

 

Alternate Reality Game, Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

This is not a game

By Tom Dove

Link to the entire article: https://medium.com/@illexical/this-is-not-a-game-44142be5ff2c

Ong’s Hat.

A funny little name. A name on a map of a town that can’t be found.

Emerging on the nascent public internet at some indeterminate point in the late nineties, Ong’s Hat was the prototype for what would become a genre of participatory literature called the alternate reality game, or ARG. An ARG is part adventure story, part puzzle, part esoteric mystery, part scavenger hunt, part online community, all quite weird. They are mostly played on public forums, to capture the widest audience, but their content often spans multiple platforms, and typically multiple media. There have been many thousands of ARGs now, tiny and massive, but one of them was first, and it was wilder than the rest.

Ong’s Hat was by turns surreal, goofy, cosmic, and sinister, drawing heavily on classic counterculture and conspiracy theory lore. In the very early days of the worldwide web, it was doing something in a dispersed form that Mark Z. Danielewski would shortly be hailed as a postmodern genius for doing in the novel House of Leaves: playing adeptly with our ideas about how and why we find things to be true. What makes us believe a thing is real? The course of the game, its story, exists only in inaccurate second-hand reports and archived materials stripped of context now. By accident or by design, all the original online content has long since subsided into the digital sands, but the ghost of Ong’s Hat haunts us still.