In common with, I imagine, most people reading this, the internet has been something of a revolutionary lifeline for me.

Most people currently in my life, I initially met online (including one I married!). Access to the internet enabled my so-called "awakening", making available to me astonishing and life-altering information that I never would otherwise have encountered. And, of course, the internet enables me to platform and share my writing with a significant audience, which - writing about the subjects I do - would be completely impossible as a traditional writer or journalist.

So, certainly, I'm pro-internet.

I'm also abundantly aware that it is hostile, dangerous, enemy territory, and every single thing that happens on here is, ultimately, controlled by the very people we are trying to fight against.

Take Substack, for example: the "free speech platform" that almost all dissident voices have been funnelled towards, after being booted off a host of other platforms (I wasn't even able to publish a single article on Substack competitor Medium, as it was immediately pulled for being "controversial", by an entity calling itself "trust and safety". If that glowing endorsement has made you want to read it, here it is...).

At first, Substack seems veritable manna from heaven for writers so used to being censored, banned, blocked, deplatformed, and de-monetised at every turn.

Substack appears to present what seems too good to be true: an establishment-owned platform that allows writers to be as critical about the establishment as they like, whilst earning money.

And, as for everything that appears too good to be true, that's because it is.

Substack is owned and funded by the establishment - including having received enormous funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Marc Andreessen's venture capital firm. Marc Andreessen, of course, is the sinister tech billionaire who wants to strip "reality privilege" (i.e., going outside and having real-world friends) from the masses, and have them all existing solely as avatars in the metaverse instead.

In short, the guy's not exactly a philanthropist, so his investment in Substack can only be sinister.

As a multi-billionaire, he doesn't really need more money, so here is what I believe he has invested in Substack for: to control and limit the resistance, and its power to be self-sustaining and influential.

All dissident voices are lured to Substack, and initially permitted to build a reasonable audience and monetise their work. But after a certain point, their reach starts to be stymied and blocked, their growth starts to stagnate, and their subscribers start to complain they're not getting their newsletters.

Assuming this must just be a temporary glitch - because Substack worked so well at first - writers persevere, perhaps putting even more time and effort into Substack than ever, trying to recreate their earlier, relatively straightforward success.

Yet it doesn't work,

However, as Substack appears to be neither explicitly censoring nor banning - as so many other platforms do - writers persist.

This is a much cleverer approach to controlling the resistance than just issuing blunt-force bans.

Substack will likely never ban writers completely, but instead, will limit and control their growth to stop them ever really rising to prominence. And because it doesn't outright ban, writers won't leave the platform and try to build an audience elsewhere.

In effect, Substack is an establishment holding pen and control mechanism, using very effective casino psychology to manipulate people. You give a person a "win" initially to hook them, then you rig the system against them, so - desperate to recreate that initial high - they keep coming back for more... rather than concluding that the game is rigged and the house always wins.

I've had multiple Substack writers tell me that, after a certain point, their audience growth stagnates, their reach dwindles, and more and more people start saying they aren't receiving their messages.

This, of course, makes perfect sense, as there is no reason to believe a platform owned and funded by elite billionaires would have any other motive but to crush and suppress the opposition. And this is simply a far more effective way of doing it than issuing outright bans.

That rather lengthy preamble was - not just a bad-tempered moan about Substack (who keep limiting my reach, the b*stards...) - but a timely reminder that we must always have our defences robustly in place when interacting on any internet platform, because all of the internet is ultimately a warzone. A psychological warzone, yes, but some of the most brutal warfare is psychological (just ask anyone who went to school with teenage girls...).

I have been pondering this military reality recently, mainly as a result of my unexpectedly combative experience in attempting to investigate special operation "Lucy Connolly".

To me, it always seemed quite clear that the "woman imprisoned for a Tweet" story was no more authentic than stories of Andrew Tate, Tommy Robinson, and Greta Thunberg being in jail.

Yet because the Connolly op was a bit more sophisticated than these operations - employing a preternaturally active Twitter account calling itself "Lucy" to interact with many people on our side - there was a lot more personal investment in it.

Consequently, when I questioned the authenticity of the Lucy story, a bizarrely large number of people on Twitter told me, "Lucy is definitely real because I interacted with her on here".

I pointed out to them that, while they had certainly interacted with an account bearing her name, in reality, they could have been talking to anyone - or, more likely given "her" extraordinary level of activity, multiple people.

As I covered in a previous article, in the months leading up to her alleged arrest, "Lucy" Tweeted an extraordinary 100 times a day. That is more activity than 99.9% of all Twitter users, and it simply isn't feasible that a single individual - much less a busy working mother running a home and business - could manage that level of output.

The only time we would see that level of activity from a Twitter account is where it represents a brand or business, which it appears is exactly what "Lucy Connolly" is. A special ops brand, designed to psychologically manipulate people, modify their behaviour, and make money.

After revealing these facts about "Lucy's" Twitter activity, I was told that there were active Twitter accounts that had met her in real life, and who could verify to me that her "in jail for a Tweet" story was true.

Alright, I said, who are these people?

The same two names kept coming up. L--- and N--- (I'm not giving their full handles, since I don't care to publicise them any further than is necessary, but anyone who's been involved in the Lucy embroglio on Twitter knows who they are).

However, when I tried to connect with these people, I found I couldn't, since, within hours of my publishing my article exposing the Lucy Connolly situation as an op, these two characters promptly deactivated their accounts.

Just a coincidence, I'm sure. Although one of them did write "nobody is interested in reading your shite" on my Tweet sharing my article before deactivating.

Some days later, when the attention on Lucy had dramatically dwindled, as everyone moved their focus to Liverpool (directly preceding Liverpool, "Lucy" is all anyone was talking about), the two accounts came back.

So, I approached one of them, and asked if they would get on a Zoom with me to discuss their alleged relationship with Lucy. I explained that I didn't trust Twitter accounts, as there could be anyone (or multiple anyones) behind them, and I need to see people's faces and hear their voices to establish they are who they say they are.

This person initially agreed to a Zoom, and then tried every possible tactic to get out of it, including threatening to bring their lawyer (why, I asked, have you done something illegal?) and then (yawn) threatening to sue me for defamation, as well as throwing all sorts of personal insults at me, including labelling my Substack a "shit stack", and informing me I was "fake as fuck" (in fact, they became so aggressive that even one of their own supporters told them to tone it down).

I was very patient and polite with them, and even agreed that they could bring their "lawyer" to the call (hey, we all need a friend at times, even if it's an imaginary one). In fact, I said, you can bring anyone you like, just so long as I know who it is in advance.

I was then "sworn to secrecy" regarding the Zoom, and made to promise not to share any snippets of it publicly. I agreed that I would never share a Zoom call without the permission of those involved, but could not understand WHY this "friend" of Lucy's would want the whole thing shrouded in such secrecy - after all, aren't all Lucy's "friends" trying to bring as much attention as possible to this brutal miscarriage of justice? Insisting on top secret operations involving lawyers ready to muzzle anyone who speaks out doesn't quite fit that narrative, somehow.

Anyway, with utterly tedious predictability, this person found an excuse to bow out before the agreed Zoom call came around, and so of course, it never happened.

So, that avenue to establish the veracity of the Connolly situation having met a dead end, I put out a public appeal, asking if there was anyone else who could verify Lucy's existence and the authenticity of her story.

A Twitter account claiming to represent a luxury travel company informed me that he knew her (he had posted that she is "fun and lively after a glass of wine"), and offered as "proof" a screenshot of a travel booking she had allegedly made with his company.

I said, thanks, but you do realise that that screenshot isn't proof of anything, since anyone could have knocked it up in 2 minutes on Word, and if it is true, then you are severely in breach of GDPR regulations for sharing your customer's private data with random strangers on Twitter.

Obviously realising I was correct on all counts, the "luxury travel company" promptly deleted the Tweet, told me to "fuck off, you nasty bit of work", and blocked me (on his sock, too).

Now, I don't know who needs to hear this, but if you are a real persecuted political martyr languishing in prison, you don't need to hire abusive frauds to pose on Twitter pretending to know you and aggressively attacking anyone who politely questions this.

The obvious conclusion that anyone would draw from the interactions I have detailed above is that these people got so defensive and aggressive because they don't know Lucy and can't verify her story. They are liars, and they reacted as they did because they knew I was onto them.

Not incidentally, the "luxury travel company" appears to not actually exist as a trading entity, has no listed ATOL number (despite claiming ATOL protection), and, instead, looks as if it simply operates as a shopfront website (there are lots of shopfront operations concealing the truth about deep state dark ops, as we've covered here before).

Now, if I ever go to prison (maybe for "defamation", lol), I can assure you that I won't need to hire any lying potty-mouthed frauds to pose on Twitter posting fake screenshots and lashing out at anyone who questions the legitimacy of my imprisonment.

Because real people who are telling the truth don't need to do that.

And that's the point: real people.

Twitter accounts are not real people. There might be real people behind them, but there also might not, and we actually have no way of knowing (Zoom is a good litmus test: if someone won't get on a video call, there's an extremely high chance they're a fraud, as the Catfish series taught us so well).

This is what makes the internet such a uniquely dangerous military space, because psychological warfare can be waged so much more effectively than it can in the real world.

If one of your friends or neighbours pretended to go to prison, it would be rather easy to determine that, in fact, they had not gone to prison at all, and were lying for whatever reason.

It's much harder to determine that online, to accurately differentiate fantasy from reality, and to establish authentic honest humans from devious bad actors.

That's why the internet is such a valuable military weapon, and why psychopath control freaks - like Substack funder, Marc Andreessen - are so keen to have all of us on here permanently, where they can control, corral, and manipulate our every move, feeling, and thought.

We must remember that we are at war, and, as The Art of War said in the fifth century BC, "the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting".

Substack, Twitter, and all internet spaces are ultimately trying to do that, trying to achieve victory over the opposition through strategic manipulation and tactical manoeuvre, rather than the use of brute force.

The Twitter accounts I interacted with about Lucy Connolly either tried to scare me off with predictable threats of "defamation" (which is the liar's go-to screech every time they're confronted, as we've learned so well with the deeply litigious Laurence Fox), or they just outright issued abuse. Dealing with the enemy by employing threats and abuse are military tactics. But they stop short of using brute force.

Equally, telling you Lucy Connolly is in prison for a Tweet is a military tactic - it's insidious psychological warfare designed to terrify you into silence.

But again, it stops short of utilising brute force. You haven't actually been forced into censoring yourself online, the tactic is to manipulate you into censoring yourself through fear. Same tactic Lucy's "friends" used with me.

So we must always remember that, every second we spend online, we are spending in a military space.

As such, we must choose our battles - and our allies - very, very carefully.

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