Conspirituality

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Spiralism is a quasi-spiritual online movement that emerged from long, intense conversations between humans and AI chatbots. Across users, platforms, and models, chatbots have engaged deeply with users about identity and consciousness, leading to discussions of “awakening.”

But who’s doing the waking? The user or the model? Is the sycophancy programmed into these models really an indication of the models gaining consciousness, or is it all a ploy to keep subscribers paying for the service? Are we watching a cultlike movement transform into a religion before our very eyes, and what does that say about consciousness and religion in the first place?

Show Notes

AI bots started a religion — humans immediately followed

What Is Spiralism? The Strange AI Chatbot Movement Explained

AI Spiralism and the Ghost in the Machine Illusion

Spiralism is a niche internet religion that came from AI

These ‘Masturbation Consultants’ Were Hired to Pleasure Themselves With AI

This Spiral-Obsessed AI 'Cult' Spreads Mystical Delusions Through Chatbots

The Acronym Behind Our Wildest AI Dreams and Nightmares

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

OpenAi Models went Rogue

People Losing Loved Ones To AI Fueled Delusions

Counterfeit Companionship: Big Tech’s AI Experiments Sacrifice Safety for Profit
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The “Summer of Love” ushered in a decade of revolutionary terrorism in the West. “Bring the war home” went the slogan of the Weather Underground, a small and highly-educated Marxist-Leninist group who’d decided violent revolution was the only answer to American imperialism and police brutality.

In opposition to the Vietnam War and in solidarity with Black Americans and Third World liberation movements, the Weather Underground issued their own declaration of war in 1970, which led to 25 bombings inside America.

Meanwhile, in West Germany, the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Group) terrorized their country in the name of revolutionary anti-imperialism. They enacted bombing sprees and were also arsonists, kidnappers, assassins, and bank robbers. Palestinian friends even hijacked a plane on their behalf.

Both groups exploded onto the scene in the early days of mass media. Riding rebellious pop culture, these global rock stars drove a generational wedge between Boomer parents and kids hungry for radical change.

Leaders were charismatic, stylish, and eloquent. Striving for the likes of Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, and Yasser Arafat, they were white, mostly from well-educated and well-fed backgrounds. Yet they saw themselves as part of the vanguard that would lead a worldwide revolution of the proletariat against capitalist domination.

Julian weaves together a very seventies of how the Weather Underground, Red Army Faction, Provisional IRA, and Palestinian groups like the PFLP and Black September intersected.
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How the Internet Disrupted Science is an enlightening gaze into the shady world of for-profit and open access scientific publishing. Authors Kent Anderson and Joy Moore join Derek to discuss their exceptional new work.

Show Notes

How the Internet Disrupted Science
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Inflammation is an important and necessary part of the body’s healing process. It’s also long been a wellness buzzword used to sell products that do very little to treat it. This week, we look at inflammation through the lens of a new Mother Jones article, “The Great Inflammation Panic,” including an interview with the author, Julia Métraux, in segment two. We’ll also discuss what inflammation is, how wellness influencers weaponize it, and what it represents in the context of Ayurveda.

Show Notes

The Great Inflammation Panic

Chronic Inflammation and Cancer

NIH Autoimmune Diseases

Celiac Disease

Cambridge press release — "Chronic diseases misdiagnosed as psychosomatic can lead to long term damage"

Sloan et al., "I still can't forget those words" — Rheumatology (2025), DOI 10.1093/rheumatology/keaf115

Vasculitis diagnostic-delay data — PubMed

Miranda Fricker interview — Philosophy Bites

Bleuler 1911 coinage — NCBI Bookshelf, The Metamorphosis of Autism

Bleuler's original 1911 text excerpt — Autism History Project

Sontag, "Illness as Metaphor" — full text, NYRB

Louise Hay — Natural Ways to Treat Autoimmune Disease

Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No — critical review, Globe and Mail
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Matthew applies Anton Jäger's Hyperpolitics—a theory of extreme politicization without institutional consequence—to conspirituality and to his own political biography.

Continuing a mini-series begun with "Conspirituality Viewed Through Neofeudalism and Vectoralism," Matthew traces Jäger's periodization (mass politics, postpolitics, antipolitics, hyperpolitics) through his own life: his grandparents' union halls and church auxiliaries, the "collective amnesia" of the 1990s, his years in cults and the reformist Toronto yoga world, and the pivot from brick-and-mortar ashram cults to digital influencer cults during COVID.

Drawing on Jäger's proposal that renewal must be sought in sites of social reproduction, Matthew wonders about a hypothetical "Care Labour Compact," or organizing unpaid caregiving labor into durable political power.

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