This story is from the fall 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE BE QUIET AND DRIVE ISSUE. You can subscribe to get 4 print issues of the mag each year here.
Last summer, Alicia McGill, the admin for two private antivax conspiracy groups on Facebook, broke some bad news to the communities: She was not actually a fellow truther, exposing the supposed tyranny of big pharma and the globalist elite. In reality, she was a proxy for someone known only as AVK, who’d infiltrated their groups years ago to monitor their wild claims and share them with the world. When their old admins stepped down, AVK quietly took over—and he’d just invited a ton of skeptical outsiders to join and mock members’ beliefs.
Within days, both conspiratorial echo chambers descended into a morass of rage and ridicule. It’s an ongoing trainwreck you can’t help but watch, like trashy reality TV.
This was just one of AVK’s operations. Over the last six years, the anonymous Canadian flooring salesman has infiltrated, ridiculed, and occasionally fucked with over 500 private Facebook conspiracy groups.
AVK told VICE he started around 2019, when he noticed distant family members sharing antivax memes. Curious about their claims, he joined some closed groups and quickly realized “they were insane,” rife with baseless assertions, lapped up by rapt audiences who shout down all skepticism. AVK recognized it’d be pointless to argue with these zealots—but thought sharing their posts might help outsiders understand the batshit that awaits at the end of the just-asking-questions pipeline. So he made a Twitter account to join other infiltrators—like his mentor, The Real Truther—in posting screenshots, with derisive commentary.
“I want people to understand that if Uncle Joe is posting about gasoline in vaccines, then there’s a damn good chance he also believes the ‘libs’ are harvesting missing children in secret tunnels for adrenochrome,” AVK explains. “I want people to be mentally prepared when Uncle Joe shows up at the next family Thanksgiving dinner.”
Gradually, AVK found more groups, and branched into covering more inane conspiracies—mountains are ancient giant tree stumps!—to “break up the [antivax] evil with some shits and giggles.” He also launched “Project Batshit,” in which he and collaborators planted nonsense in groups to see just how much BS they would swallow, but soon abandoned it as he “couldn’t compete with the crap they came up with on their own.”
A few studies suggest mocking conspiracies can contribute to “pre-bunking” efforts, by souring outsiders on a piece of bunkum before they encounter it in the wild. But experts like University College Cork researcher Cian O’Mahoney worry AVK’s approach doesn’t really help people tell good logic from bad—and that belittling conspiracists may further isolate and radicalize them.
“I want people to be mentally prepared when Uncle Joe shows up at the next Thanksgiving dinner”
AVK doesn’t put much stock in that concern. He thinks the groups he infiltrates are already terminally isolated and dangerous, and his content rarely makes it back to these insular circles anyway. Absurd claims about drinking your own piss to cure cancer are objectively hilarious, he argues. Why not laugh at them? Co-opting real tragedies, like school shootings, into 5G conspiracies is callous. Why not call these individuals out as the “degenerate ghouls” they are?
Most of AVK’s followers appear to be people like Kelly*, a middle-aged woman who recently saw a friend fall down conspiracy rabbit holes. (*VICE has changed her name to protect her identity.) AVK’s account helped her “wrap my head around my friend’s beliefs,” while affirming just how unhinged the social media conspiracy pipeline is.
Are AVK’s antics a constructive means of combating conspiracism? Probably not. But his shit posts and sneaky ops are an outlet for folks who live under the long shadow of conspiracy Facebook, who would rather laugh at the madness than go mad themselves.
And the group that brings him the most laughter? It’s “the piss drinkers,” he says. “They sometimes cross the line when they discuss feeding their pets or secretly sneaking it into their kids’ food, but for the most part they’re disgustingly hilarious.”
PROJECT BATSHIT’S GREATEST HITS
Starting in 2023, AVK began planting bullshit claims in antivax groups and watching members spread them without skepticism. Here are a few of his best stings.
Batshit Post: “My close friend is a Para M3dic here in the UK. He says that 7 times now in the past month they have arrived at the scene to find the pati3nt already [tombstone emoji]. He says that on the way back to the [hospital emoji] black, shiny liquid would start oozing out of their nose and sometimes even ears.”
Responses: “… look up Billie Eilish and When the Party Is Over. […] Television predictive programming. Part of this somehow.”
“The black, shiny liquid is clo-tted [blood emoji] and what is going on here is a cover-up.”
Batshit Post: “A friend told me that their cousin (4x [vaccinated]) was having strange things happen to him. Car doors locking and unlocking when he passed. Automoatic doors not opening for him, streetlight flickering and stuff like that. Not all the time but enough that he notices.”
Response: “He has been magnetized. I have 2 friends with that problem”
“No idea if it’s related or relevant but my sister drains watches and I charge them. I can keep a watch going forever but she drains them in days”
Batshit Post: “I was having coffee with one of my best friends the other day and he was telling me that his oldest boy (he’d gotten all the ‘things’ [vaccines] for work) had gotten very, very sick and ended up in the hospital. After many tests, he was told he had no spleen… Has anyone heard of things like this before?”
Response: “Organs are shrivelling! Many people are being told they didn’t have them from birth. I call bs!!”
“Praying for Nurmener Trials to begin SOON”
This story is from the fall 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE BE QUIET AND DRIVE ISSUE. You can subscribe to get 4 print issues of the mag each year here.
The post Your Conspiracy Theorist Uncle Hates This Guy appeared first on VICE.
