The Life of Fredrick Brennan feat. Jay Brandstetter (E361)

Fredrick Brennan, the self-taught programmer and type designer best known for founding and then later denouncing the anonymous imageboard 8chan, died on January 10th, 2026. He was 31 years old. We had Fredrick on the QAA podcast several times starting in 2019 and he always had valuable insights into the technical aspects of imageboards, the owner/operators of 8chan, and the history of the internet. To remember Fredrick’s life, his journey from free speech absolutist to crusader against QAnon and 8chan, and our personal stories of “copypaste,” Travis, Jake, and Julian are joined by Jay Brandstetter, Fredrick’s partner during the last months of his life and host of the I’m From the Internet podcast. I’m From The Internet Podcast https://shows.acast.com/im-from-the-internet-a-podcast-about-somethingawfulcom Jay Brandstetter https://bsky.app/profile/jaybrandstetter.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 and binge the entirety of our new show Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows: https://cursedmedia.net Produced by Liv Agar and Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. 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.

In 1981 an arcade cabinet began popping up all over the Portland area called Polybius…or at least…that’s the claim. Released by a company called Sinneslöschen, the game used a graphics rendering technology that was impossibly ahead of its time. Kids that played reported having migraines, hallucinations, and memory loss while others became vehemently anti-arcade. But, just as quickly as the machines appeared, those same men in black soon took them away. No one has seen one since. What is the truth behind Polybius? A military recruitment program? East German video game technology? Mere urban legend? In part one of this two-part episode, Jack LaRoche guides us through the background and usenet-sourced tales of this legendary arcade cabinet. Jack LaRoche https://bsky.app/profile/coyotespeaks.bsky.social Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Produced by Liv Agar and Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. 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.

Liv is back this week with the latest update in looksmaxxing content, specifically, the rise of Clavicular - a 20 year old self help influencer that has become a prominent figure in the world of the far right manosophere as well as on the looksmaxxing forums themselves. Join Jake and Julian as Liv defines words like “framemogging” and “jestergooning” before diving into the events that gave Clavicular his sudden rise to internet stardom. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Produced by Liv Agar and Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. 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 Annie Kelly continues to report on the “London Has Fallen” trend in video content by bringing us even more London-based fake TikTok news. She is joined by guest Katherine Denkinson, who walks us through a story she reported on with London Centric concerning a TikTok account that was posting fake migrant housing rage bait. While editing this episode, more information came to light, so we invited Katherine back to provide an update on the situation, including the motives behind the hateful content. Who’s secretly filming fake TikToks inside Londoner’s homes? - Article by London Centric https://www.londoncentric.media/p/tiktok-london-immigrants-fake-news-house-tours “Hate brings views”: Confessions of a London fake news TikToker - Article by London Centric https://www.londoncentric.media/p/london-tiktok-fake-news-creator-hate-immigrants Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Produced by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. 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.

Jake is retiring from neo-nazi research, but before he gets back to giant squids and time travelers, he's leaving us with a parting gift: a deep dive into The Skokie Affair. In 1977 Skokie, Illinois had a population of around 70,000 and it is said that 40,500 of them were Jewish. It is for this reason that a thirty-two year old, half Jewish neo-nazi, named Frank Collin, sent the Park District of Skokie a letter asking for a permit to hold a Nazi Parade. The case that followed (Village of Skokie v. NSPA) went all the way to the US Supreme Court leading to a precedent that still stands today. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Produced by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. 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.

As Super Bowl LX rolls into Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium, Jake Rockatansky and Travis View are joined by sports writer Arif Hasan (Wide Left newsletter) to dig into one of the NFL’s strangest modern fan obsessions: the idea that the San Francisco 49ers are cursed by an electrical substation. Over the last decade the Niners have become infamous for suffering from brutal, momentum-killing injuries. This has fueled endless theories about potential reasons for the medical incidents that are causing heartburn among football fans in the Bay Area. Is it turf, training, recruiting strategy, bad luck, or something else? One rumor has dominated the online discourse: the idea that the Northern Receiving Station, right next to where the pro athletes train and play, is bathing players in “EMF” and making them more injury-prone. We trace how the theory travelled from locker room chatter, to online content creators, to a “board-certified quantum biology practitioner” until it finally had to be addressed by the 49ers administration and NFL’s chief medical officer. This is despite the fact that the idea doesn’t have any empirical support and it doesn’t even make sense upon examination of the timeline of the substation. Wide Left: A newsletter about the NFL and its intersection with politics and culture https://www.wideleft.football/ Arif Hasan https://x.com/ArifHasanNFL?lang=en Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media and binge the entirety of our exclusive shows Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Truly, Tradly, Deely by Annie Kelly https://cursedmedia.net Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com) https://qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

"Are you still talking about this Epstein guy?" Yes Donald, we are. This week Travis has prepared a slough of revelations from the latest DOJ document dump pertaining to nightmare creature Jeffrey Epstein. We’ll cover emails from the likes of Elon Musk, Christopher Poole (aka "Moot"), Richard Branson, and...Xbox? We think Travis may have listened to "Truly Tradly Deeply" one too many times because even he has taken up a little baking in this episode with some encouragement from Liv, Jake, and Julian. Jake makes the argument he should become pilled again. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Produced by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. 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.

Devin Thomas O’Shea transports Travis to Milwaukee, 1932, where Thomas Pynchon’s newest novel Shadow Ticket kicks off with speakeasy intrigue, Depression misery, and a precision-engineered car bomb. Devin unpacks Pynchon’s characteristic hinge-of-history setting, when everyone’s forced to pick sides, as the book’s reluctant bruiser-turned-investigator Hicks McTaggart gets thrashed around by forces he can’t (and won’t) understand. Shadow Ticket’s paranoia, occult object-mysticism, and explosive politics connect to the real history of American labor violence: the Haymarket bombing and riot, the Bay View massacre, and the 1932 Ford hunger march. What can the novel, probably Pynchon’s last, teach us about our current strange moment in history? Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium QAA episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Devin Thomas O’Shea https://devinoshea.wordpress.com/ https://x.com/devintoshea https://bsky.app/profile/devintoshea.bsky.social The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis by Devin Thomas O'Shea — Coming June 2026 https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2770-the-veiled-prophet Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media and binge the entirety of our exclusive shows Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Truly, Tradly, Deeply by Annie Kelly https://cursedmedia.net Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. 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.

Travis and Jake are joined by journalist Mike Rothschild to discuss the second time that the federal government has killed someone in Minnesota then smeared them as a terrorist, the growing paranoia on the right that opposition to occupation by federal agents constitutes an “insurgency,” the White House manipulating photos using AI, Kash Patel treating the FBI like his personal Hype House, and alleged time travel by the late Charlie Kirk. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium QAA episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Mike Rothschild https://x.com/rothschildmd https://bsky.app/profile/rothschildmd.bsky.social Mike Rothschild's Patreon https://www.patreon.com/cw/MikeRothschild Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media and binge the entirety of our exclusive shows Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Truly, Tradly, Deely by Annie Kelly https://cursedmedia.net Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. 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.

This week we dig into a peacoat-wearing QAnon counter-protester and end up unspooling a whole new nest of open fascists. First up: pardoned Jan. 6 figure and proud white supremacist Jake Lang, doing street-theater politics in Washington, D.C. at a “crusader rally,” complete with Nazi posturing, bizarre props, and an argument that quickly devolves into the classic far-right pastime: accusing each other of being FBI. We also track Lang’s later appearance near Minneapolis City Hall, where he and his crew clash with anti-ICE protesters, and where his claims about being “stabbed” don’t line up with what’s publicly verifiable. Then we pivot to a very different attempt at building an “American Reich”: a neo-Nazi “urban wear” merch brand that seemingly springs to life overnight on Instagram. From “Woke Reich” prototypes to explicit Nazi aesthetics, the episode traces the rapid online radicalization of an online creator and how algorithmic attention, engagement, and audience validation can help turn grievance content into an overt extremist identity (with a storefront attached). Content warning: This episode discusses neo-Nazi propaganda and symbolism, antisemitism, racist rhetoric, and political violence. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium QAA episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media and binge the entirety of our new show Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows: https://cursedmedia.net Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. 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.