LARPing on Reddit

While Charlie Wiser does not use any alts on social media, it's up to others to decide whether or not they want or need alts. Not my business.

However, when someone is deliberately exploiting known weaknesses to manipulate others in a community (which I'll loosely define as a group using a platform to discuss a topic - #ufotwitter on Twitter, UFO-related subreddits, etc.), I have thoughts about it, especially if that user has gone one step further and attempted to gain people's trust with a personal touch - in DMs.

First, backtracking to another Reddit user, Anjali, whose story I followed since August last year because while she seemed to be deluded rather than entirely fabricating, she was raising the hopes of her followers without providing a scrap of evidence for her outlandish claims. She asked them to have faith because she would absolutely definitely come through for them with the greatest event in human history. It was always going to end in confusion and disappointment for those who were caught up in it. Additionally in her case it was obvious she was lying about certain things (such as whether she took mind-altering drugs, whether she had the owner's permission for an expedition) and this was eventually proven when she released the communications between her and the property owners, and when I spoke to them.

26forty_stop is a Reddit user who’s been manipulating UFO enthusiasts’ minds since mid-2020. She claims insider knowledge of aliens, UFOs, and government cover-ups (including Anjali's true purpose and whatever UFO subject is topical on Reddit at the time) thanks to her federal government job. She has had mutliple alts including Splatooningfork, 5C_Attica, Underthe7thfloor, and iatt21. After yanking people around by the nose for a while, cultivating their trust but never providing evidence, she usually deletes everything before moving on.

Reddit, Aug 2022

Splatooningfork

Splatooningfork began life as a regular redditor with no interest in aliens, posting from May 2018 mostly on gaming and pro-wrestling subreddits. She talked about her experience as a transwoman with a boyfriend and young daughter, and worked for a Pensacola FL company with cash flow problems and a difficult boss, which supplied equipment to DoD contractors. (Later she would specify that this account was only "partially" hers, presumably to explain why some information contradicted the biographical details of her later alts.)

Reddit 2019-2020

In May 2020, Splatooningfork posted on r/aliens about her recent UFO sighting with her mom (whom her "friend" would later claim died in the 1990s), then quickly deleted it and reinvented herself the very next day as a government employee of some 20 years with extensive insider info about ET craft that never crash and 11 documented alien species that visit Earth to observe us. She said her knowledge came from documents, photos, etc. that crossed her desk as part of projects she was working on.

Reddit, May 22, 2020

For three intense weeks, Splatooningfork provided a bounty of hints as well as definitive statements (along with strident rebuttals of those who expressed doubt) that if true would be highly classified, while also saying she would not provide proof as it would jeopardize her job. She implied foul play when her early posting history was deleted (she had, of course, deleted it herself not realizing it could be accessed on archives) - see above. This obvious LARP was so confidently asserted that she attracted quite a following.

Selection of posts from Splatoonfork, Reddit, May 2020

Underthe7thfloor

She reappeared a month later (late June 2021) as Underthe7thfloor to announce that because her friend was getting DMs asking after her, she would do an Ask Me Anything. That friend was Furmi_Purradox, who joined Reddit within days of Splatooningfork leaving. They said they knew each other in real life.

Underthe7thfloor answered the AMA questions about her secret knowledge for three days, then deleted that account (as she'd said she would) at the end of June.

Furmi_Purradox used the same profile pic as Underthe7thfloor, which naturally made people  suspicious. In a transparent attempt to bolster her "friend's" credibility, Furmi made an aggrieved post in r/relationships saying that Splatooningfork, her friend of 10 years, had been lying to her about her life and job - that she was really a government employee with access to super secret stuff but had pretended otherwise because she had to. 

Furmi_Purradox posted for a few more weeks, revealing herself to have the same voice, bio, interests (gaming, pro-wrestling), daughter, boyfriend, even height, as Splatooningfork, and she too was a transwoman. She deleted her account at the end of July 2020.

5C_Attica

Within days of doing the AMA, Underthe7thfloor became 5C_Attica, and starting July 2, 2020, answered a flurry of questions in r/aliens. She alluded to "Project Sigmund" which sparked yet more questions and speculation. By the end of September she was posting in r/pregnant and then announced to her fans that her name was Amy, she was pregnant with her second child, and because of this she'd lost access to the super secret stuff.

Yes, you heard that right. This transwoman was pregnant.

5C_Attica admitted that Project Sigmund was nothing but a social experiment, apparently for her own amusement, to see how others would create a narrative simply by being given a name. 

Reddit, Sep 2020

However, she insisted the rest was true and got snippy about being called a troll. The mods locked her thread.

r/aliens Sep 26, 2020

​Meanwhile, on Sep 18, 2020, 5C_Attica had already started a similar "experiment", inviting people to speculate about her prediction that in January 2021 the United States would accuse Chile of covering up UAPs interfering with US military training and flights. In early January she said this was "still on schedule" but on January 6 (Insurrection Day) wrote "The events of today could be an issue. We will see how long it lasts." She then deleted her account.

iatt21

On March 3, 2021, a user named nonametest tagged user iatt21 (despite iatt21 having never posted before) to comment on Anjali's story about meeting aliens in Wayne's tunnel, posted two days earlier. A short while later iatt21 said she was 5C_Attica and proceeded to post the usual cryptic nonsense, and in May commented on a post by Throawaylien (TAA), whose "July 18" deadline was approaching. Her last post was at the end of June 2021.

26forty_stop

Two weeks later (July 10, 2021), 26forty_stop took up where iatt21 left off, still talking about TAA. After July 18 passed without incident, she revealed TAA was a Korean-American from Philadelphia named David. The subreddit r/Throawaylien has many posts from people impacted by that LARP.

26forty_stop said Opaque_Ghost was one of TAA’s alts. Opaque_Ghost had been trying to puzzle out the meaning of 26forty_stop’s previous usernames, concluding in January 2022 that they referred to coordinates which another user, greatbrownbear, had just posted about - being the supposed location of an underground pyramid in Alaska.

But back to Anjali: after her press conference (Aug 2021), 26forty_stop claimed in DMs (which I acquired from the recipient) that the government gave her and others like her, such as TAA and Anjali, mandates and directives to discredit ufology. But Anjali, she said, had gone off-script and was antagonistic towards 26forty_stop for "creating skepticism". 26forty_stop and her previous alt only ever posted a couple of insignificant comments about Anjali, so perhaps she was referring to DMs between them, which she apparently no longer had. She said in a DM that Anjali would be "removed".

Anjali stopped posting mid-October, 2021 after her subreddit r/TranscensionProject took off. She remained very active on Twitter and podcasts.

Reddit, Aug 6, 2022

A DM forwarded to me shows 26forty_stop asking Anjali to "absorb the gravity of your role in your endeavors" and Anjali berating her for her arrogance.

26forty_stop then vanished for a year. She returned a month ago, Aug 6, 2022, with a post that was removed by moderators from both r/aliens and r/UFOs, who were apparently tired of the trolling, but it remains in r/wecomeinpeace (a community that grew after TAA's deadline passed, consisting of the people disappointed by that non-event but apparently eager to latch onto another LARPer - this post summarizes the impact). She riffed on the subjects du jour: whistleblowers and cover-ups, claiming ties to Elizondo and Corbell, and inserting herself into yet more topical UFO stories such as the Calvine photo (she claims to have seen two of the other photos in the sequence).

She explained she dropped breadcrumbs in the past because “I could not explain outright what I know”, and that her misinformation was “for protection”. It was all part of some grand plan:

Reddit, Aug 6, 2022

She also claimed (as have several others) to have been Throawaylien (a claim she'd made in private a year earlier) and I suppose by extension Opaque_Ghost and greatbrownbear. She revealed TAA’s purpose with this information-free explanation: “It renewed interest and kept eyes on the subject at a point when they were most needed.” She denied the LARP took advantage of people's optimism.

Reddit, Aug 6, 2022

As of today, the user 26forty_stop account remains active. EDIT: Last post was Oct 15, 2022. From at least early 2023 the account is suspended.

Manipulated to give up on truth

I posted a very short summary about 26forty_stop's history in r/wecomeinpeace to demonstrate she does not post in good faith, along with a warning about this type of LARP, and it was deleted for "harassment" despite that subreddit's history of similar warnings from moderators aware of the fragile mental state of some users.

I think it's important to highlight manipulation. Spend enough time in online UFO communities and it's hard to overlook the fact that it features a startling rate of mental illness (and self-medication), from depression and anxiety to delusion. Additionally, the subject attracts people who seem to be more trusting and gullible than your average population, lacking in a scientific education that could help them avoid magical thinking.

They are ripe to be abused. Repeatedly.

So, I'll reiterate my warning: Vulnerable people keep falling for confident well-written bluster. Never forget that believing the lies is not the gravest problem. The worst possible mental situation you can put yourself in is being manipulated to the point where you can no longer tell truth from lies, so you throw up your hands and end up trusting no one and nothing except whatever makes you feel good today.