I was crawling through some Twitter threads a while ago and stumbled across a discussion drawing parallels between QAnon and ARGs (alternate reality games) from July that had some interesting info:
Nothing really groundbreaking here, but it did catch my attention. Since I have no idea who these people are I decided to do the most basic amount of research and it turns out there really was an ARGFest in Seattle back in 2013.
...We explored the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) Using Alternate Reality Environments to Help Enrich Research Efforts (UAREHERE) project...
If I'm understanding this correctly IARPA is basically DARPA but for intelligence agencies instead of the Department of Defense - I guess they got jealous and wanted their own parallel program.
Anyway, that's all I have for now. Since my curiosity is piqued I'll probably do some digging into their cheekily named UAREHERE project.
I may end up making a standalone post once I find out more about this UAREHERE project. Before I stopped researching for the day I did come across this relevant post from 2014:
It’s not every day I am contacted by a foreign governmental agency (I am Canadian), particularly ones devoted to intelligence gathering. The email itself was amusing in both its sweeping overreaching and vague request married with dry attention to detail.
I had two concurrent thoughts: 1) it was written by a bot; and 2) it was the rabbit hole to an Alternate Reality Game (ARG). I immediately forwarded it to Tom Liljeholm, one of my producing partners on The Karada . Tom and I met in 2010 when I became the hardcore ambassador player of the ARG he produced as a component of the juggernaut Conspiracy for Good (CFG) transmedia experience. I soon became surprised to find out CFG was referenced in the RFI as the only ARG specifically mentioned by name.
Since IARPA had not reached out to Tom, or anyone else I could find in the ARG community, I decided the grass roots Alternate Reality Game I produced last year, titled Work with No Pants , must be how I got on the radar of this intelligence gathering agency that runs, according to its website, “high-risk, high-payoff research programs that have the potential to provide the United States with an overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries.”
I was crawling through some Twitter threads a while ago and stumbled across a discussion drawing parallels between QAnon and ARGs (alternate reality games) from July that had some interesting info:
Another reply from the same person:
Another commenter:
Nothing really groundbreaking here, but it did catch my attention. Since I have no idea who these people are I decided to do the most basic amount of research and it turns out there really was an ARGFest in Seattle back in 2013.
If I'm understanding this correctly IARPA is basically DARPA but for intelligence agencies instead of the Department of Defense - I guess they got jealous and wanted their own parallel program.
Anyway, that's all I have for now. Since my curiosity is piqued I'll probably do some digging into their cheekily named UAREHERE project.
deleted by creator
I may end up making a standalone post once I find out more about this UAREHERE project. Before I stopped researching for the day I did come across this relevant post from 2014:
Spies Like Me: My Response to IARPA’S RFI UAREHERE