Theresa Duncan Unplugged

[nathan28]

Maybe I am not avant-garde enough, but I've really lost faith in--to use terms that are popular with a certain crowd--any project that involves exploiting difficulties in the dominant narrative in order to perform a media prank. The only people interested in media hoaxes are hoaxers and a sub-set of intellectuals and paranoids.

It's like Joseph Matheny's Ong's Hat, or the work of fiction The Magus. After a while, what is the point? Ohh, wow, you "subverted the dominant paradigm" and gave a couple people insight into power dynamics and the paranoid-critical method and their own incredulity and mythic fiction. Oh, wow. I'm sure that they'll re-enter the social game as EST Supermen able to make their lives into paradises.

That, and the Situ project was always predicated on "the end of work." While in a way that's happened--we've gone from 120 hour weeks to 40 hour weeks--until food starts growing itself, well, good luck with that.

On edit, FWIW this shit seems way more popular in countries where they actually have the dole

Does anyone think that the Theresa Duncan game will help anyone reclaim authorship over their own lives? It may have "indicted" the whole blogosphere as both dupes and self-righteous stooges and pieces in a certain "game"... but at the end of the day, you still have to eat, and one out of ten kids is going hungry in the US. Try to "game" them.

Yes, of course the whole thing is stage-managaged, but you don't get to start spouting off your own lines and suddenly manifest your stage-managership: they'll either ignore you at best or get a hook and pull you off.

[chiggerbit]

Oh, well shit happens, elfsmiles. I thought I was missing some key point.

[chiggerbit]

Well said, nathan.

[justdrew]

When I started reading your post I wasn't sure where you were going with this, but by the end I was grateful for the ride.

And this:

the post-Duncan period has exposed the moral and intellectual (to say nothing of artistic) bankruptcy of the conspiracy subculture and the entire blogosphere, especially viz. the ritual desecration of a woman's Exquisite Corpse in the furtherance of personal agendas.

ought to be repeated, bolded and underscored.

I'm not really sure what witz Means by that, can you be?

witz et all - Just what do you think the response of the "conspiracy subculture" and "entire blogosphere" should have been?

still wondering...

[Jeff]

witz et all - Just what do you think the response of the "conspiracy subculture" and "entire blogosphere" should have been?

still wondering...

It probably couldn't have been anything else, which accounts in large part for my ongoing disaffection from the entire enterprise.

[chiggerbit]

I see that the link I posted on pseudocide has gone to a different page, so I'll post the other link, and the entire article:

http://everything2.com/node/1950359

Pseudocide (idea)
(all of Pseudocide, no other writeups in this node)
(idea) by Heitah (3.1 hr) (print) ? (I like it!) Thu Jul 24 2008 at 17:58:58
C! info: 1 C! given by: shaogo


Faking one's death is called "pseudocide." The term is considered a Neologism. Also known as "going off the grid," as well as a British expression "doing a Reggie Perrin." Drowning is the most popular form of deception, due to the easily explained absence of body. Oddly enough pseudocide is nearly always committed by men.

Disappearing is one thing, announcing your death is another.
People do it for varying reasons, to start a new life, to collect on insurance claims, for safety issues like the witness protection program, etc. "There is one group of people who are given every assistance in disappearing - protected witnesses who give evidence, sometimes against fellow criminals, and in return are provided with new identities, jobs and homes far from familiar haunts." (BBC) It's also led to the business of tracking these sort of people down, skip-tracing. It's a serious crime to commit pseudocide, and is not for the faint of heart. Even if you successfully disappear, you may not convince those you left behind that you're actually dead. That is why drownings are always a mystery, there just isn't a body to put in a coffin and show in a funeral.

"An uncredited study given passing mention in the UK press rather unbelievably makes claim that as many as 26% of "suicides" from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge in which no body was found, were conceivably pseudocides." (Bnet)
Peculiar cultural tradition
It isn't just Hollywood that is fascinated with the whole concept of pseudocide. The concept isn't new either. But it has been taken to new exaggerated extremes to pull a scam. "The individual who vanishes, apparently dead, only to reappear in a different guise, is one of the world's most cherished myths, a staple of high art and low farce, from Reggie Perrin to The Return of Martin Guerre to The History of Mr Polly by H.G.Wells." (Times Online) Sometimes a pseudocide creates a folk icon like Lord Lucan, who is to this day still being spotted in various parts of the world.

Tips
To commit pseudocide, you'll need a pay-as-you-go cellphone to get started. Hire a homeless person to buy it and put it in their name. It's important that you don't use any credit cards for anything, or any other traceable form of money. Use cash. To gain a safe identity, you can change your appearance and create a new one. Or, gain a new one by assuming someone else's. Make sure all ties to your former life are severed. No contact with family or friends, they could turn you in, and their phones could be tapped. Since drowning is the most common practice of pseudocide, be sure to have a witness. If you choose to go the route of leaving another's person body behind, think again. This day and age of technology has DNA testing, dental records, etc. to prevent a mutilated body representing your corpse in that crashed and blown up vehicle you tossed off the cliff. And how exactly were you going to get that corpse anyway? Robbing a mortuary? Or killing someone? Now you have two frauds to deal with instead of one, if you get caught.

Now you see me, now you don't.
John Darwin, the latest busted for fraudulent insurance claims when he committed pseudocide by drowning, was recently caught in Panama five years after his stunt. His wife collected on the insurance claim while he went off to start a new life in "paradise." Unfortunately for him, he allowed a real estate agent to take his picture, and it quickly surfaced on the internet. Darwin had an insurance pay-out of £250,000.

I want to be Jason Bourne...
A lot of famous people have committed pseudocide.
John Stonehouse, a British politician who faked his own suicide by drowning in order to escape financial difficulties and live with his mistress. He was discovered in Australia - where police initially thought he might be Lord Lucan - and jailed.
Graham Cardwell, a Lincolnshire dockmaster who disappeared in September 1998 and was assumed drowned. Eight months later he was discovered living in secret in the West Midlands. He claimed he had thought he was suffering from cancer (though had not sought medical attention) and wanted to spare his family the trauma of it. He was not prosecuted.
Alan Kirk Wolford,The Colorado Springs funeral home director, committed pseudocide in hopes of not paying $42,000 in back child support, and $7,000 in student loans. Wolford fake "cremated" himself.
Steven Chin Leung, who faked his death in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in order to evade a charge of passport fraud.
Dorothy Johnson, an American woman who allegedly faked her death in the September 11 attacks in order to collect on insurance claims allegedly filed by her daughter, Twila McKee. Johnson and McKee were charged in 2003 with insurance fraud.
Ken Kesey, an American author who in 1966 faked his death and fled to Mexico in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid imprisonment on marijuana charges. Taken from here.

I wish Heath Ledger committed pseudocide. Then he could reappear as The Joker again, and The Dark Knight wouldn't be his last legacy. Just imagine the reviews the next movie would get, when crazy Ledger plays lunatic Joker, coming back from the dead.

I also wish that my ex girlfriend had committed pseudocide instead of having a pseudo seizure...

[I took out the sources, as they spread the thread]


I'm beginning to wonder if this site isn't being used in some way with some of the gaming. Or maybe it's synchronicity.

[justdrew]

witz et all - Just what do you think the response of the "conspiracy subculture" and "entire blogosphere" should have been?

still wondering...

It probably couldn't have been anything else, which accounts in large part for my ongoing disaffection from the entire enterprise.

well, "the ritual desecration of a woman's Exquisite Corpse" seems to me a complaint that the two cited 'investigators' failed to add anything new and/or appropriate to the art piece (a life can be and often is conceived by some of us as a work of art in progress, I'd think T. was one of those people).

Personally I find the whole thing very odd. The situationist familiarity would have been immunizing against going over the edge into full-blown clinical paranoia. What evidence is there that the scilons didn't mark her "fair game"? I thought the default assumption around here is that self-identified victims should be believed.

[nathan28]

witz et all - Just what do you think the response of the "conspiracy subculture" and "entire blogosphere" should have been?

still wondering...

It probably couldn't have been anything else, which accounts in large part for my ongoing disaffection from the entire enterprise.

I do have to wonder what the fuck happened and what the fuck to do. "Murder will out," they say, but I have little faith. Dark Alliance got a million hits a day back in 1996. People raised hell about it and even got their Congressional rep (McKinney) on their side. But even then--it was over a decade too late. The damage had already been done and they already prosecuted the patsies: the book's closed.

All I can say is, it's alienating. I don't know that there is a right response, save to say that "gaming" a media hoax to re-assert my "playership" hardly feels like it would be a fulfilling enterprise.

[justdrew]

funny you should bring up dark alliance, I've been resisting the urge to say "Gary Webb" all thread.

This is the kind of thing that divides conspiratainment form the real deal. The whole things gotta make people wonder, are they starting to take notice of "us"? Do they perhaps actually have the man-power to run ops against internet posters? A realistic appraisal of their organizational structure would say, YES.
Given her days in DC, I'm probably 1 or at most 2 degrees of separation from having met T. what exactly she got into that could warrant silencing eludes me. but Cowan tops the list of exactly the type of mid-level shit-head who might take out a contract like this. The first six months I couldn't look into the matter for more than about 15 minutes at a time without feeling a need to pull away - while feeling guilty for not trying to identify the likely perps.
both the cited investigators in the OP clearly spent a shit load of time on the matter. and while I don't buy the Kidman hypothesis for a second, DE turned up some very odd things while looking. I tried to skim thru constantine's post last night, came away with a bad case of information overload that was almost physically unpleasant.
At this point, anyone with information that she was fair-gamed is probably scared shitless - maybe some new leads will turn up, maybe pouring over it all again will reveal a missed clue, I don't know. the mediabistro CIA link is very very interesting... worth looking into.

If it weren't for the investigators of this, flawed tho they may be, I wouldn't have gotten to see The History of Glamour - which was very good.

[chiggerbit]

well, "the ritual desecration of a woman's Exquisite Corpse" seems to me a complaint that the two cited 'investigators' failed to add anything new and/or appropriate to the art piece (a life can be and often is conceived by some of us as a work of art in progress, I'd think T. was one of those people).

I think we're being gamed here and now. Why capitalize "Exquisite Corpse" otherwise, except to draw attention to the term?

[nathan28]

well, "the ritual desecration of a woman's Exquisite Corpse" seems to me a complaint that the two cited 'investigators' failed to add anything new and/or appropriate to the art piece (a life can be and often is conceived by some of us as a work of art in progress, I'd think T. was one of those people).

I think we're being gamed here and now. Why capitalize "Exquisite Corpse" otherwise, except to draw attention to the term?

Someone suggested that the whole Duncan thing was an elaborate media "game" or "hoax," depending on your perspective. Which is fair and worth considering. I've never met Duncan and I don't know anything about her, really, or even if she's a real person, whether she's alive or dead, etc. I for one am surprised by my own response so I can say if I was "gamed," it was not for no ends...

And FWIW the whole internet is an exquisite corpse, which explains quite a bit about these things.

[8bitagent]

Maybe I am not avant-garde enough, but I've really lost faith in--to use terms that are popular with a certain crowd--any project that involves exploiting difficulties in the dominant narrative in order to perform a media prank. The only people interested in media hoaxes are hoaxers and a sub-set of intellectuals and paranoids.

It's like Joseph Matheny's Ong's Hat, or the work of fiction The Magus. After a while, what is the point? Ohh, wow, you "subverted the dominant paradigm" and gave a couple people insight into power dynamics and the paranoid-critical method and their own incredulity and mythic fiction. Oh, wow. I'm sure that they'll re-enter the social game as EST Supermen able to make their lives into paradises.

I wanna see people and groups really subvert the paradigm and fuck shit up. Like Ron English and Billboard Liberation front on a massive scale. Like the "Max Headroom TV Pirate" interruption on Chicago tv in 1987.

I want to see 20 story black "Expose 9/11" banners unfurled from the tops of New York high rises.

I want to see more corporate billboards creatively defaced and rewritten.

I wanna see avant garde performance art installations with a political and social commentary taken to a wholllllle new level. Forget a few protestors dressed in orange gitmo fatigues.

Sadly, even the "subversive artists", "cultural hackers" and "pranksters" have been castrated and neutered in this post 9/11 world when they should be red hot active sleeper cells of causticly motivated media subversion.

[8bitagent]

funny you should bring up dark alliance, I've been resisting the urge to say "Gary Webb" all thread.

This is the kind of thing that divides conspiratainment form the real deal. The whole things gotta make people wonder, are they starting to take notice of "us"? Do they perhaps actually have the man-power to run ops against internet posters? A realistic appraisal of their organizational structure would say, YES.
Given her days in DC, I'm probably 1 or at most 2 degrees of separation from having met T. what exactly she got into that could warrant silencing eludes me. but Cowan tops the list of exactly the type of mid-level shit-head who might take out a contract like this. The first six months I couldn't look into the matter for more than about 15 minutes at a time without feeling a need to pull away - while feeling guilty for not trying to identify the likely perps.
both the cited investigators in the OP clearly spent a shit load of time on the matter. and while I don't buy the Kidman hypothesis for a second, DE turned up some very odd things while looking. I tried to skim thru constantine's post last night, came away with a bad case of information overload that was almost physically unpleasant.
At this point, anyone with information that she was fair-gamed is probably scared shitless - maybe some new leads will turn up, maybe pouring over it all again will reveal a missed clue, I don't know. the mediabistro CIA link is very very interesting... worth looking into.

If it weren't for the investigators of this, flawed tho they may be, I wouldn't have gotten to see The History of Glamour - which was very good.

Like the UFO phenomenon, there is JUST enough "interpretation" on
suspicious accidents, killings and suicides to make us think SOME deaths are the work of the "deep state".

The lead Franklin Coverup investigator blows up in an airplane with his son the day before he's spose to present evidence...a few years later the former head of the CIA William Colby ends up dead in his own pond after deciding to help expose the Franklin Coverup

Gary Webb, shot twice in the head

Terrence Yeakey, OKC top cop and OKC bombing hero found slashed, beaten and shot in an alley right before he was gonna expose bombs in the building

One of Clinton's interns who was threatening to go public about an affair,
ends up shot to death in a Star Bucks in DC in 1997 not long after...no money was taken, and she was killed execution style.

Mark Lombardi

Danny "Octopus" Casalaro

Hunter S Thompson, who was exposing child kidnapping by the deep state and 9/11

...Blake and Duncan?

Dr. David Graham?

Dr. David Kelly?

See, who can say for sure if these are all random accidents, suicides and lone killings? Who can prove "the deep state" and conspiracies killed them?

We KNOW Frank Olsen was killed by the CIA and "suicided". That's 100% verified and proven, but are there others?

[justdrew]

I don't really know for a fact the the thugs are really exactly "CIA" I'm proceeding on the theory that it's basically a mafia-style crime ring occasionally pretending to be "intelligence" assets.

[chiggerbit]

Jeff, I'm curious if you knew what the other meaning of "Exquisite Corpse" was, with reference to the game.