When I was working for a major broadcasting conglomerate, I passed the time sneaking cult symbols into its affiliates' news graphics. I don't really know why I did it. Maybe because I'm just easily tickled.

I became interested in graphics when I was young. In high school, I used some savings to buy a new estimator with really loftier quality graphics capability for its day and started making 2d cartoons, mostly involving things killing each other, because I was a teenage boy that was funny—things dying, things running into walls—all poorly animated.

I applied to a agglomeration of schools for Comp Sci and Electrical Engineering, only went to a state school. Information technology was the cheapest and offered a expert scholarship. At the time the school was in the process of dismantling their traditional arts studies section while simultaneously stepping up their figurer graphics department, so I ended up in the imaging and digital arts field.

I hid Illuminati symbols in broadcast news graphics because I was bored. Image 1.

Gabriella Garcia

Author, equally anonymously told to

They liked my demo reel of killer teddy bears

After graduation I wasn't looking at many prospects, only a friend of mine at college was working at a company who sold computers and Information technology services to a big broadcasting visitor on the East Coast and heard that they were looking for a new 3D animator so he put my proper noun in the lid. At that place really wasn't an interview. It was more of just an overview of my demo reel, which mostly consisted of stuff I had done in college. I threw in some other stuff, similar 3D animations going dorsum to my high school style of things—more often than not teddy bears—killing each other, drinking, having sex, doing drugs… Cipher peculiarly not safety for piece of work, only it was definitely in there.

It was my job to make 3D mockups of 2D images. For instance, making a 3D model of the station logo and drawing it into a template that had some camera moves so nosotros could have it fly across the screen and what not. I would likewise take to practice less templated promos for various programming, similar mocking up the background for the sports package, or creating particular graphics for special news segments.

I wasn't particularly excited to offset working at this massive media conglomerate, but I was excited to have something to start paying off my student loans. It was super laid-back; I contracted 30-35 hours a week, I was coming in when everyone else was leaving, I was leaving as soon as I got my assignments done because no ane else was there to keep rails of how long I was at the role. My contract had me working 35 hours a calendar week. Realistically I was probably working more than like xv.

So it was a pretty cushy job. At least, at first.

15%

of voters call up the government or the media adds mind-decision-making technology to TV broadcast signals

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World News

This is a graphic dramatic reenactment of my undercover handiwork

Your local news, circulate from very far away

When I joined the visitor it owned 63 stations nationwide. It was in the midst of trying to centralize production for all of those tv stations and then there wouldn't accept to be someone locally in, say, Tennessee or New York that was working on the graphics oreven presenting the news. Information technology was someone at our broadcasting headquarters doing it instead. Specifically, they were trying to standardize the look of the national segment so that it would make national segments look seamless with local affiliate broadcasting—those affiliates being NBC, ABC, CBS, Play tricks—as well as create news segments centrally that were distributed equally local newscasts. And nosotros didn't really have to worry nigh matching their local graphic logos, because we provided the entire graphics package for stations beyond the board.

Then the job stopped existence cushy. For some reason it seemed logical to the production head that I came in to work at the same time as anybody else and stay in the office a realistic 35-forty hours, fifty-fifty though my work took significantly less fourth dimension than that. This led to a lot of sleeping at my desk-bound, only I'd endeavor to counteract nodding off by doing dive rolls down the hall.

There was admittedly a correct-wing political motive behind the company's broadcasting decisions

As fourth dimension went on I found out more about the visitor that really made me like working there less. For instance, just before election fourth dimension 2004, they decided to produce circulate an anti-John Kerry documentary [Stolen Honor] across most of its stations, which violated federal requirements to provide balanced airtime to candidates. Later on the public outcry, they decided to broadcast a poorly executed analysis reviewing whether or not they should have shown the documentary, which was obviously biased just somehow allowed the company to avoid whatsoever legal trouble.

There was also the time that Ted Koppel was going to spend a whole Nightline broadcast reading the names of American soldiers who had died in Republic of iraq since the commencement of the invasion, and the visitor decided to censor the program by ordering its affiliates non to run the segment. They also produced a Bill O'Reilley-style Bourgeois rant program that broadcast on all of its affiliate stations, and then in that location was absolutely a right-wing political motive behind the company'south dissemination decisions.

28%

of voters believe secretive ability elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the globe through an authoritarian world government, or New Globe Order

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The giant pentagram, "A" is for Anarchy, the all-seeing heart

I started fucking around with the graphics packages when I leveled upward from making generic logos to getting more than creative projects like designing the holiday animations and elements for a special pre-produced investigative news segment or special war report.

I'd find a style to incorporate something in the graphics, commonly small and out of the way—possibly a reference to the Illuminati or Freemasonry—just to fuck with anyone who noticed it. I likewise liked using symbols created by John Dee, who was a 16th century alchemist and occultist, similar the esoteric Monas Hieroglyphica, or just simple, but well-known things similar the pentagram or the centre in the pyramid.

I wasn't doing it considering the news was so patently right-wing, but doing information technology made me feel a little fleck improve about myself at the end of the day, because I was working for a company that was diametrically opposed to the generally lefty, by and large pro-homo rights views that I cared about.

I think the first time I decided to have some fun with the graphics was for a sports package; at least that's the one I put a giant pentagram in. It was i of those intros where there was the initial background that I made, and someone else would add together the animation of the helmets of the two football teams dandy into each other. Then there would be the pentagram when the pull out of team stats came out. Information technology was almost besides fast to catch.

Chaos Sun

ANOTHER graphic dramatic reenactment of my clandestine handiwork

I had to exercise a graphic for this "Our news travels the world" promo that had 3 red comets flying across the globe, and, well, I just had to make them depict a behemothic Chaos "A." When I had to make a Halloween promo, I just couldn't help myself from throwing a Masonic pyramid eye on i of the tombstones, you know just to keep people who were looking for that kind of matter on their toes. At that place were a couple of Discordian references similar the Sacred Chao's apple and pentagon that I'd throw in, which would really only be obvious to anyone who knew near Robert Anton Wilson'due south llluminatus! trilogy.

A couple of times I tried to be natural language-in-cheek. I used words, just those always seemed to backfire. Like for a "Media Exposed" segment, I'd throw in words like "bias, lies, and corruption" which of form were supposed to exist self-referential, but the visitor read information technology every bit if they were peachy open up the "bias, lies, and corruption" of competing media outlets. They always got approved by the production head.

Terminated, finally

I don't think anyone at piece of work ever caught on, and I never met anyone who mentioned witnessing weird symbols in the local news. I hateful, most of the people I know or talk to don't watch network goggle box, and honestly I never even saw most of my graphic copy in the wild because I didn't watch these stations either.

Eventually I got fired for a totally unrelated reason. Apparently someone complained near picking my olfactory organ at a coming together. That's actually all the information I was given at my termination; past the time I got back to my desk-bound my computer had already been removed, and and so I had to awkwardly ask the person who fired me for bus fare considering I had carpooled to piece of work that morning. From rumors I heard later, the guy who had fired me decided he hated me at the last Christmas party, and I guess a calendar week prior to me being fired I told someone that I had started working at a lefty radical bookstore, simply I didn't recollect anyone cared about that. He apparently was merely looking for a reason to fire me, then that was that.

A conspiracy theory theory

I don't really know why there are so many conspiracy theorists; my only working theory is that, well, sometimes in that location is a conspiracy, only often the conspiracy is a lot simpler and less insidious than people are making it out to be. Just there's also only a latent mistrust for the governmental structures, which is particularly true in my city, which has been in the throes of institutionalized racism and economic collapse for a very long fourth dimension. But most conspiracy theorists I've interacted with are not victims to that every bit they seem to come from a sure level of comfort.

I recall that comfort caters to conspiracy considering they're comfortable enough to think about things and realize how fucked up they are, but instead of recognizing real causes they create an impossibly malicious principal plan to explain it all.

I don't know, mayhap it helps them experience amend about non doing anything about how fucked upwards things are.

4%

of voters say they believe "lizard people" control our societies by gaining political power

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