From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer, all mission control decads. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Here's a question. Who doesn't want to belong to something bigger than themselves, Whether it's feeling like you belong to a family, to a an organization, to a religion of some sort. Uh. For most people, this is a fundamental, primal drive, and there's a bonus. It's cool to be a member of something bigger than yourself, but it's even cooler too many people if the thing that you are a member of is exclusive, if not, everybody can be as special whereas enlightened as you. It's actually it's that drive is a huge problem with the world today. The intrigue of it. It makes you feel alive. It's the basis of so many works of fiction, including things like Obviously, as as you'll see when we uh when explore today's topic, folks, obviously the game film with Michael Douglas, and of course the fantastic for Co's Pendulum by Umberto Echo. Today's story is a story of curated conspiracy, part performance art and part Silicon Valley startup, part push for genuine adventure, and part push for cold hard cash. We're talking about something called the Latitude Society. Here are the facts, here's here's what happens when you join this. Just put as we explore this, put yourself in the mind of a person experiencing this, and you'll get a sense of how cool it is at the beginning. Well, yeah, I think the first thing you have to do is imagine that you are yourself doing whatever mundane things it is that you do every day, no matter how much you even enjoy. Like we enjoy our jobs. We we like doing this, but we have to. We have a regimented schedule where we do this over and over and over again. This is what we do. We take care of our families. We you know, eat, we blah blah blah blah blah, all the things you do. Imagine that, and now imagine that you get an invitation to this thing called the Latitude society. And the way you get the invitation is very important, and it generates so much intrigue in someone like you, like me doing their everyday things that it is there's there's almost no way to say no. Yeah, I mean, you know it, because it comes in the form of a friend who is essentially inviting you into this kind of shared experience with an invitation, a actual physical invitation that takes the form of a blank credit card in a sleeve like you might get at a fancy hotel or maybe even not a fancy hotel for your key card. They're slid into those little paper sleeves or the WiFi code has written on only this sleeve has a strange kind of geometric symbol on it that's embossed and kind of a little shiny and and uh and you know, bespoke looking. So it's already like reeks of entry. When you pull out the actual card and it looks like a blank credit card, there's a website. There's an invitation code where you flip. When you flip it over to the part where there would normally be like the signature, it says absolute discretion, which is sort of a buzz phrase that we're gonna hear repeatedly in this story. It's almost a monstra absolute discretion. Once you go to the website, you into your code, you get a selection of different appointment times, and you lock yours in. Then you show up to an address in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco. At this point you will have an experience that feels very through the looking glass, very Alice in Wonderland. And if you have not had this spoiled for you, warning spoilers ahead. What happens when you open the door. The website for this organization has a has a kind of decadent description of this, saying through the door and behind a thick curtain was the flux chamber and automated hallway with only one way through down a wooden slide at the base of in ornate Victorian fireplace mantle, awaiting the visitor. At the bottom of the slide was a lobby area with one red neonce side reading s and then three doors. So you have you know, you already have this really this really cool, almost David Lynchy and vibe. Whatever door you choose, you'll go through an increasingly narrow passage surrounded by all the walls are padded with black carpet, and this is called the dark Maze. You hear music, you hear us suscerous whispering voices, whispering voices, and that's what guides you through this completely dark labyrinth. Your monitored by cameras the whole time, which is important later. Uh. And then finally you go through this crawl space and find yourself in what they call the library chamber. Uh. This is surrounded. This is really cool if you see it. It's surrounded by all these bookshelves. And then there's one book on a pedestal, and it's called the Book of the Latitude. First, this book appears to be blank. It doesn't. It's important to note that all of the books in the room are the same book. It's the same book that is open with blank pages sitting there in front of you. Um. And you know, you just curiosity is going to lead you to, like Ben said, open it up and you find that the pages are blank. But then almost out of nowhere, you'll hear a voice. And then these pages, or at least the pages that are that the book is open to begin filling up with the words that are being spoken to you. So it's almost as if the book is being written in your presence in that moment, and that's on on the left hand side, you'll get the words being written out, and then on the right hand side you'll actually see an illustration start to form a video of sorts playing somehow within this book. Yeah, I mean, it really is sort of an interactive theater experience. If anyone is familiar with the company Punch Drunk who did the will continues to do I think probably during COVID. It's on hiatus, but hopefully we've back soon. Uh. Incredibly beautifully curated kind of theatrical experience in New York, and I think there's other versions, but it's called Sleep No More. And it's essentially like an interactive theatrical experience whereas you're progressing through this actual physical space, you can choose your path and things happen based on which path you choose, etcetera. Uh. This this really reminds me of that. But the using whatever theatrical projection technology uh that they use, essentially what's formed before your very eyes. Is this like mythos, this sort of like base kind of fable that is at the center of the Latitude Society's kind of lore. Uh. And you can actually witness this for yourself, um, in a couple of places. There's a really good article on Vice about it called My Year in San Francisco's two million dollar Startup, and also the documentary Bright Axiom, where you can actually see it visually. It's it's very much worth a watch. Yeah. In Bright Axiom is uh the name documentary. You may also be interested in the institute uh be worn. They are they they're somewhere between documentary and long form infomercial. But this fable is important to the Latitude Society. It's when the first pieces of literature that people experience when they interact with this society. It's often recited before new adventures or new society meetings, which they call practice. I want to point this out just before we go any further, and I just want to make sure everyone understands everything we're describing to you here. These are physical experiences. This is not some virtual reality thing. This is not some web based experience that you're going through your physically, going through those doors down the slide, looking at this book filling up with pages, hearing this fable for the first time. It's all real, real time, you just experiencing it. And then after you have experienced this fable, you are sent off on something similar to a scavenger hunt. You're you're on a should in the mission, uh, you go, you do things like go to a bar and have a coded conversation with a bartender, and you get this special coin and you end up using it to participate in an arcade game which leads you onto another to another experience. It's all very just. So this entire thing is an introduction to the Latitude Society. Was the Latitude Society, Well, it is self described secret order dedicating itself to expanding human consciousness, and it's uh vaguely locked in a conflict with forces of darkness who are trying to stop the society from growing and expanding and sending their message out. Pretty exciting, right, pretty exciting way to moonlight. So what happens once you pass this first adventure You are inducted as a full time member and you get access to something called the Night Book. The Night Book is like a social network platform, and this is where people get together and they tried to decipher the various mysteries of practices and philosophy. Uh. They also have Like you said that the emphasis here is on in person experience. So they also had town hall events. You can you can see various video of this. Uh. They also had dedicated talks and meetings. This was throughout the San Francisco area and active members of the community could mingle and they could openly talk about the future of society with one another. Because the thing is there's there's a fight club vibe here that helps with the exclusivity. The society has four kind of guiding principles. Number one, by far is absolutely discretion, meaning you're not supposed to talk about latitude in front of people who are not evolved with latitude unless you want to invite them, in which case you give them one of those little cards. And really, you know, it feels like it's very secretive, but it also it makes sense logically to avoid spoilers. Right, is a all about surprise, And as Noll said that that phrase absolute discretion was embossed on the slip that you would get that the card was inserted into. So that's your first your first interaction with the Latitude Society after someone you know quietly says, hey, can you keep a secret? Is the phrase absolute discretion. And here's the thing about that phrase. The people or the creators of the Latitude Society took great pains to make sure that the member, the user understood that that phrase has two different meanings, and one of them was was essentially saying that you will be able to have good judgment in what you decide to share, what information you decided to give out. The other one is essentially just implying secrecy. So it's both of those things, right, That's that's what Ben is talking about. You get to choose is as a member. Who else becomes a member? And they had and like, like we're saying, there are several other tenants that were very important to Latitude Society. Yeah, value, we value experiences over things is that's the second tenant. And I think that's something a lot of people can agree with, especially you'll find uh this belief common in people who have lived a long time. People are at the end of their lives tend to enjoy the experiences they had or the memories of those, more so than the gadgets they accrue. So I get that one third tenant we give in order to become part of a story greater than ourselves. Think about it. What is giving me there? We'll get to it, uh. And the fourth is freedom from dogma. So the person who invites you is thereafter referred to as your ascendant and you are their descendant. It's it's a bit like a less sinister version of an upline or down line, a multi level marketing scheme. And I want to be very clear, the Latitude Society is not multi marketing, and it's also not nexium. And it's also not nexium. Anybody who is a member of this they don't, for instance, have a quota of other people they had to invite or anything like that. But you want people to be in known of this adventure. So after you've finished this first mission they call it book one, then you are given a code word that gets you further access on the website, and then you get the opportunity to invite other people, theoretically as many as you would like. So, just like for COO's Pendulum, the majority of people involved knew this was a game, but felt it was more fun and more immersive if you took it seriously. So many people did, and it did not hurt that the group responsible for creating the Latitude Society named Nonchalance was staffed by very talented creatives. They made it compelling, you know what I mean. It didn't seem it seemed real. It felt real, and in a way it was. I also wanted to point out one tiny detail from the experiential part, the first kind of down the rabbit hole visit to that mission, uh, you know, facility, I guess we call it. There is a part when you go to that window where it says the neon, there's like kind of like a shrouded figure behind sort of um, I guess, frosted glass. You're not quite sure if it's even a real person or not. Um. And like a drawer pops out and you're instructed to place all of your personal possessions in that drawer. So it's got this like inherent kind of decoupling from like you know, the hum drum day to day of of of existence and identity, not to mention things like you know, your phone and all of that, and it's actually taking you out, especially like a place like San Francisco Silicon Valley that's the epicenter of this type of like decoupling you know, from real real life uh and and thrusting you into this place where you have to separate yourself from all of that those trappings and literally, you know, go down a rabbit hole of actual physical experience as opposed to virtual. And then at some point, while you're experiencing this or while you're hearing this show, you have to ask yourself, what exactly is this thing? I would say it's immersive theater. It's there are a lot of things like this. It's similar to projects from places like Sembi Playhouse in the Atlanta area, multiple haunted houses in the US around the world, various theater projects in New York. It's also a networking opportunity. Liked mentioned this on an earlier listener male segment. People tend to want to be Promethean, whether or not they have like earned that feeling. We want to be the bringers of knowledge often rather than the receivers. So this became a way of looking very cool too. Friends where colleagues met somebody at a business lunch, I think they're dope. You want them to feel the same way about you. Slide in one of those little black cards. I can't tell you anymore absolute discretion, right, and then maybe it leads to better things in your working life. But what what else was the point? What was actually going on here behind the scenes of this behind the scenes underground endeavor. Yeah, it's not like this was a cheap thing to produce. You're talking about physical elements, like you said, with people working very hard to create a story and things, and then going to various places throughout the city and planting a bartender, making sure that bartender is going to give out the information, making coins that have to go. I mean, it's a production. This is expensive stuff. Why would you spend all that money to do this in multiple locations too? We mentioned going to an ark that's another physical location with all of these kind of like bespoke sort of psychedelic looking arcade machines um, one of which when you put that coin in, like you're mentioning Ben, a deity appears to you, which is a is a theme that we're gonna see throughout the story. Sort of looks almost like the creepy rabbit from Donnie Darko, only it's more of like a half man's face with these weird eye stocks that don't have eyes. Uh, And and and he in sort of like again like serial killer voice disguise or voice gives you instructions on where to go next, and you know, starts feeding you these kind of philosophical lines about the practice and all of that good stuff. So what was the point at expensive production, multiple rented locations in the city with the highest cost of living in the country. It's not a it's not a it's not a small amount of overhead here. What else was the Latitude Society and what were the motivations for creating it? Will explore this afterword from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. To understand the Latitude Society, we have to understand the organization I mentioned earlier, Nonchalance, along with two people, Jeff Holl and Cat Miller. Jeff Hall is the company's founder. He started Nonchalance in the early two thousand's. Cat Miller as one was one of the primary employees, and there were other people there were it takes a village right to make a conspiracy. There were artists, community engagement experts, various engineers. The money for this came from Jeff Hall directly. He gave He gave two million dollars. We came to find out or that's that's what's believed that he gave two million dollars to get this thing started. How does one end up with two billion dollars such that you say, I want to weird conspiracy. A good way to make two million dollars is to, you know, have money given to you through your family. We we've talked about wealth in the United States and countries throughout the world that have a long history, and how one of the best ways to just become filthy rich is to get it from people who came before you in your family. So, um, there's something that happened with Jeff Hall his father. Uh, he created an incredible company that was valued just under five hundred million dollars and it was sold to Goldman Sacks five hundred and thirty one million dollars. And maybe that's how he got that two million dollars. But at least according to Jeff in response to that Vice article that we mentioned before, he states that he actually made his wealth or it began his wealth working for his father's company before it was sold to Golden Sacks, and that he became a partner when the firm was acquired by Golden Sacks. So mainly, and he wrote to the st Fist and you know, he wrote the same message device as you said where where he was taking issue primarily with the implication that he was a trust fund kid. And he said he found it but littally, which is understandable. It's not it's not a phrase. Uh. I don't think it's a phrase a lot of people use to self identify, you know what. It's also inherently dismissive and unfair people that are fortunate enough to be in that situation. It's one thing if you just lean on that money and do nothing, or just you know, live some opulent life of privilege where you don't actually contribute anything. But I would argue this as an example of taking that privilege and converting it into something interesting, which I think is uh, you know, should be applauded. Mm hm. Well, the Latitude Society is not the first generation of this that Nonchalance has done. They tried something earlier called the Jed June Institute, which I think is a cool name. That's what that other documentary in the Institute is about. This was another a similar theme. You're crossing through the city of San Francisco on kind of a scavenger hunt immersive adventure game. But here's the here's the secret. Here's the secret to this secret society. And it's something that some of the ascendants and descendants did not care for when they learned about this. The Latitude Society was not just an artistic statement. It was a business and in theory was a very smart one. The whole was thinking in terms of a theme park of the mind. I would say, is a fair description. Do you think that's a fair description, guys? I think it absolutely is. Um And Also, this like this push pull between artistic pure artistic expression and creativity and making money is like tail as old as time, right, and so many are brilliant artists are very bad business people. Um And and it's interesting when you see that kind of like that I guess, I don't know, conflict. There's another interesting kind of group that reminds me of this called Mia Wolf and there's a fabulous documentary about them. And it started off as this collective of just like minded weirdos in Santa Fe, which has kind of a stuffy art scene that's like very you know, like uh exclusive in the everything is very expensive, you know, and kind of boring and like these kind of like seen kids like who were into like d I y punk type shows and weird music. Started this group to kind of be a counterbalance to that. But it became so successful they started getting investments from folks like George rr Martin uh and essentially turned it into this giant business. Some people were less enthused about that direction than others, and I think that's what we're seeing here. Yeah. The weird thing is there's this intense dichotomy between what was presented internally at nonchalance what was presented to people who are participating in this in this artistic endeavor. Uh. The idea is that they would one day be able to like like uh, it was startup thinking right like, let's get it going, Let's prime the pump as much as we can, Let's go hard on the paint, and eventually we will monetize this. We will make it self sustaining. Hold said. The vision was to create an immersive narrative experience that rivaled at theme park ride and production value, but was embedded into the urban landscape of San Francisco. And they had a deck or a power point and when the when it was presented internally. It was a quote growth oriented business model with an identifiable product and service, So they were definitely talking turkey behind the scenes. It would not be easy to monetize this. It would be a tall milkshake because the society was, as you said, Matt, a hugely expensive endeavor. We're talking about even even not talking about renting multiple properties in a very expensive urban area. We're talking about technical design, hours of work I d aighting and assembling this stuff, these elaborate, ornate spaces. It took three years to build that first place, which really does have like this wooden slide. It's crazy. And when they finally opened it to members, people weren't sure how to react. And it's pretty impressive too that they did this for three years without spilling the beans. But again, the price tag on that, according to employee former employees of the organization, was a cool to mill um. And here's why a lot of people got turned off. We were talking about money that was started as investment, But how did they plan to monetize the user experience. If we want to just keep being soul as in corporate about it. Once you've got to invited, once you were in, and you know you did the you did the book law in the first mission, First Adventure. Then we said you could theoretically invite as many people as you wish. That's because the invitations were sold to you on a per card basis. So let's say your Paul Mission Controled decade. You want to invite some friends, you want to invite your pals Matt Nolan Ben to to this to this adventure. Then you pay twenty five dollars a card, but later that was raised to thirty two dollars card. And then you look around and you see on this website there's all kinds of stuff you can buy very very weirdly specific. Oh. Absolutely, And that's why I think it's interesting that people didn't kind of the people like got some about of shape, because this was like, this is the deal from the beginning. You know, you you it's a closed website where you can't even log into it until you get that card with that unique code. And then once you go through, like you said, Ben, that book experience, that's when you get access to what's called the marketplace um and you can buy shirts with that slogan absolute discretion, which the author of the Vice article found very ironic, which I think is sort of the point. It's it's in like it's fun, the idea of buying a T shirt that says absolute discretion, Um, and yeah, that's right. You buy these cards, Uh, you can distribute them to whomever you wish, and then it doesn't that make it kind of like a I don't know, like a pyramid thing where you kind of like you you buy one, you get it, and then you buy more and then give it others and then they give it more and it branches off. I guess not not really, it's not. Yeah, it's it's it's it's a little different. It's not certainly not taking advantage of folks in the same way. Yeah, because you're not. You're not making money from the cards that are sold after you. And like you know, like I was saying earlier, even though they have some some language that's reminiscent of m l M S, there's not a baked in quota. No, you you don't get in trouble. You don't get twenty people per month or something like that. So it's not it's not ponzi is. It's not MLM. But they do want to make it profitable. Uh. The thing is, when you're talking two million dollars, uh, and you're you're trying to recoup that based on the sale of T shirts, impendance and invitation cards. You're looking at a very large, a nearly Sissiffian hill to climb. It would be very difficult to cover that initial investment in a reasonable amount of time. Some journalists estimated the math and they said, okay, we think over the part over the span of the Latitude Society during its heyday, maybe two thousand people were giving cards and participated in some part of the initiation. They went to the website, they never showed up to the place, and they showed up to the place and then they left and just didn't pursue the rest of book one, or they did the whole first book and then they said, okay, that's it. It was a great weekend, but I'm done. If two thousand people did this, they participate in some way, then that means the most revenue from that part of the part of the business that Latitude could make was about sixty tho dollars, which is cool, but it's not two million. And so later they did something that teed off a lot of the members a lot of the existing members who were very into this adventure in society, they instituted an annual membership fee is over three d bucks. Uh, it's still less than a burning Man ticket, people are quick to point out. Uh. But people were like, what is the mission of this changing And to the you know, to the participants, it felt like maybe it was, but to the creators, no, this was just a further pursuing the original plan. I think it's almost like the they started, you know, the members started taking things upon themselves because they like, really, the Vice article is I think the most straightforward, Like the film is interesting, but it almost has an agenda a little bit like it it really like you said at the top end and almost feels like a weird kind of commercial for the thing, and it feels like it has a little bit of a of an agenda. But the Vice article is from the perspective of someone that goes through the whole process, and what ends up happening is, you know, this person starts wearing that absolutely Discretion T shirt and using it to identify other people who have done the experience in the wild, and then those people start connecting with each other on like forums. Then they start actually doing kind of little you know, gatherings, uh that are sort of I guess I'm not sanctioned or whatever they need it to be sanctioned, but they really do start to form a community around the lore and around the whole experience of this thing, you know, again, because it's almost like a religion at that point, or it starts to at least have the sense of community that a religion can have it its best. And so I think those people who really start to get a real value out of this in their lives start to see it becoming quote unquote becoming more commercial. Maybe that's where they start not digging that because they feel like it's taking something that's very special and personal to them, uh and you know, bastardizing it in some way. But again, to the creators, this is what they had planned all along. So is it really them doing anything but what they already kind of set out to do. Yeah. And the writer for Vice, Lydia Lawrenson, she she had quotes from several members, Um, I don't want to spoil the things. She had several quotes from members who were talking about this very thing, like why the money, why is this happening? And one of the big takeaways is that this felt to them like a gift that they had been given, like someone handed them a free card. Then they got to go through this experience, and then they got to choose whether or not they paid for anything. Right now, they were being told that they had to pay, and it was like a gift became a burden essentially. But I'm sorry what had to pay in order to continue doing what going to these things like they were doing real world events, so they those were official events that there were official events, but then also just little little gatherings of of members privately right right, similar to a less citister version of squirreling in scienceologies, which we can talk about a little bit later, but squirreling is UH scientology term for when someone takes what they describe as l Ron Hubbard's technology or tech and they use it in an unsanctioned way. It's it's similar to maybe the way that the UH Catholic Church in days of old looked at Protestants, you know what I mean, like, hey, you're taking you're taking stuff that we both know is true, but you're doing the wrong doing it the wrong way. You're doing it the way like the film industry looks at pirrating movies, you know what I mean, maybe, yeah, I mean it's like you're stealing. You're basically saying you're taking our stuff and you're using it, you know, and and and you're not like giving us our due or like yeah, mad, I don't know, like the paying part certainly is at the heart of it. But yeah, you're exactly right now. I think squirreling is a perfect comparison. Let's think too about social media in the Internet. One thing that the Internet has made abundantly clear in every every culture, in every iteration, is that if people have something for free, there's something deeply offensive to people if that changes to a paid service. You know what New York Times, right, I say that as a guy with a subscription uh really really quickly, just slightly slightly off off the subject. But it's sort of like what you know, Apple is talking about potentially putting podcast siloing podcast behind paywalls, are making it a subscription thing, or it's a little vague what they're talking about doing, but that would be the exactly what you're talking about. Because Apple is sort of the arbiter of like this industry of like free content, you know, add supported free content, and if all of a sudden that change, I think people would like lose their minds m. And the reason I mentioned social media is because we can see clear parallels here, Right, social media, a lot of the platforms thrive on exclusivity in the beginning, Right, I can only have a Facebook page if I go to this school, or then if later if I go to a school. Um. We we see this time and time again. People want to be promethea, they want to be in the know. And then as it grows and more people are involved, more people are aware of this this fight club, then the problems grow as well. It's a symptom of al if I wanted to be all ted talky and pop say about it symptoms. Yeah, because they're they're they're doing testing on those early users. You know, they're like they're literally beta testing everything, including that experience that we described to you at the top of this episode, like going in and checking out that book, down the slide, all that stuff. They're testing to see how people react. And it's very very helpful to keep it low low number and how effective like it is in like making people want to continue on you know what I mean, Like that experience that first pop is what really gets you, you know, kind of converted almost right where you're either like, wow, this is something really special. I was given this gift. They had to really tailor that experience to to get the exact right kind of you know, punch to make people feel that way, and imagine how cool it is, just objectively, how cool it is if you're say a a at a at a bar somewhere it's called the Sycamore, and you're rocking, you're absolute discretion t and then you you know, you're just hanging out and you see somebody come in like furtively and have a weird whispered conversation with the bartender and they get this coin and they turn around and they see you and their jaw drops and you're like, I'm one of them. Like people love that stuff. That's why you have all these coded signals that like the when we did our episode on secret languages, right you, a city in a society speaks to itself in an ecosystem, and I guarantee you that on any given day in a city, there are people who are subtly communicating to one another right under your nose in one method or another, a signal by something, signal by a piece of jewelry, a particular piece of clothing, et cetera. I think it's I think it's so cool, But you guys are right. People had people have problems with this, Like a guy named Thomas Loads who was speaking with Lydia Lawrence and over Advice, objected because he felt the monetization was a blow to the things about the society that were important to him and his colleagues. It gave them meaning. It seemed like there was a space where they were coming together as a community in a non performative way. He felt like there was a genuine connection and they were taking taking dedicated time to reflect on ideas. And a lot of these people were in, you know, very stressful day jobs. They're they're very go go go, you know, with high stakes and stuff. So the the idea that you're hanging out with people and it's not about a work thing, it's just hanging out with people because you like hanging out and you like the stuff you do together, that that's a beautiful feeling, uh. And that seemed very meaningful to people, and they liked being in a secret Society. There was a story. We're part of the story where the audience and we're the author. That's amazing. But you'll notice the student listeners, we've been talking about the Latitude Society and past tense. Why I'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. So latitude problems. We're pretty I think we're pretty clear about that. And the thing is people agree on what they like about it, but then they disagree on what they didn't like. As Jeff Hole put it, his number one problem that he saw people having is that people weren't sure how to interpret this, how to digest it. He said, the Latitude Society may have served multiple purposes, but ultimately it could not be all things to all people. So maybe everybody just wasn't on the same page. Maybe that's where the issues began. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Uh. And there's a there's a quote here again from that Vice article from Matt Weinberger. He's a person who you know, took part in in the Latitude Society, and here's this quote. Some people treated it as a game. That makes sense, right, Some people as a social club and a networking opportunity, and some treated it as a religion, and he mentions that at some point there was a Reddit thread created by you know, someone who had heard about the society, uh and then joined. And then this person who created this thread believed they joined a cult. So they took it very, very seriously and laid out a lot of the things that were not supposed to be spoken to non members. And this person, Matt is saying that it kind of spoiled the fun of the society itself after everybody knew what it was, or at least a certain number of people. And here's the other Latitude wasn't just a business. It was a genre of business that we will call a startup. Startups have different rules. Startups have a very high rate of attrition. Startups can do enormously wonderful and disruptive things. They can also fall flat. They're risky. Like a lot of startups, Nonchalance did not seem to have a very clear focus, in the opinion of observers um, and they just ran out of money for the Latitude Society before they could finish the overall arc of the story they wanted to tell. The founder himself estimates that the daily cost of the Latitude Society just keeping the lights on, keeping the rent paid, keeping the weird coins in circulation that was three grand a day. Uh. And apparently they didn't even have a very let's say developed business plan or well not business plan, but they weren't keeping books particularly well. They didn't have, um, some of the most basic kind of book keeping sheets that you would have to have, especially with an operation that's expensive in a city as expensive as San Francisco. Um. You know, any business startup or otherwise keeps something called a profit and loss uh ledger um, which allows you to keep track of the comings and goings of money. You got to spend money to make money, but if your losses outweigh your profits, that's not a good look. Um. And this could well be an example of, you know, one of the I guess luxuries or privileges of being independently wealthy and sort of doing this like as a personal project, um, not being super meticulous about the bigger picture of the of the finances. Yeah. Yeah, there's something a little bit aristocratic about it. I could see critic taking that stance. I'm always reminded of there's an Italian publishing house that I really I really love, I respect the books they put up and they're called RESOLTI and I believe it's RESULTI the owner is this old or was this old school Italian aristocrat, And I was reading an interview with him where one day he just decided to build a hedge maze, like a huge hedge maze and invite his friends over. That's the kind of stuff that most people can't do, you know what I mean? And now we have to ask ourselves to your point, noal is is the perspective then for this person? Are they just thinking I am, I am creating this thing that I want to give to you, and the only reason money becomes involved is because I want to make it a thing that can stay around, you know, instead of something ephemeral. But at nine dollars a month, Uh, this these conversations have to happen. Um. So there were a couple of ideas and how to how to stem the financial hemorrhaging, and one of those was, let's stop emphasizing physicality. Let's move entirely to virtual reality. And that's that's a bummer. That also makes me love your New York Times example, Matt, because we've seen so many print publications say okay, we're gonna go entirely online. We're going to keep a subscription fee. And so for people who have subscribed to a paper and received a physical copy for years and years and years, they feel like they feel like they're getting robbed because they don't have the thing. And this is more extreme example, I would argue, because the entirety of the focus of the Latitude Society was in person adventure, a type of a very clever type of augmented reality. That's really what's happening. So of course folks are are going to push back against this. And there's another article by a former member UH called The author's name is Caveat Magister, and Caveat compares compares this again to burning Man and says that the exclusivity of the Latitude Society may have gone too far, leading to that practice that scientology would call squirreling, and the there was a really i would say, inspiring organic thing to happen. Active members were like, you know, I don't really need to do the official experience, and I don't really need to worry about my ascendant or whatever. I've met some people. We can just hang out, we can do our own thing. Inspired by this, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's kind of like, you know, at some point if you're a fan of Legos, at some point you don't worry about what you're supposed to build from a box you buy and just build your own stuff. They're still Legos and you're still having a heck of a time. UM. I just say, I don't see anything wrong with what these folks are doing. And by this point, of course, yes, they're paying three hundred something UM a year for a membership, and of course that the push to then have a membership whittled away at the membership very quickly immediately, UM. And you know that that's that's obviously a problem if you're trying to build a user base essentially like a startup does want to do. Now, we've got some other criticisms from people here about the Latitude Society and what was happening there, and a big criticism comes from someone named Rebecca Power, who was known by the writer of that Vice article that we discussed there, and she didn't have a great experience essentially going through it. Um. And it started on that book. One experience where you know, she looked at the book and everything, because she was contacted almost immediately after that by the person that invited her to the society, and he stated something a little strange, Uh, something we didn't know it before. This is that in many of the rooms there, the physical space that you enter, there were cameras with you know, lights as cameras generally do have, like a CCTV camera has a light that lets you know you're being watched, or that the cameras on at least or recording. And he mentioned her that, oh, I was watching you when you when you went through the fable, when you know, you sat down and you got that book read to you. Um, And that kind of creeped her out a lot, just the thought that someone was there actually watching her the whole time, not interacting with her, just surveilling her and observing her. So that was the first little thing that happened. But then she felt it got weirder from there. Yeah, she saw an imbalance in the agreement, some kind of information as symmetry would be a dry phrase for it. Uh, you do have to sign this terms of service thing, right, But as Rebecca Power found out, uh, there wasn't a formal procedure for releasing yourself from it, and she said, I know the employees are monitoring us, but who is monitoring them? And there's another good point, and you I totally forgot about this. That's before you even set up your appointment, right when you sign that, so you know you have no idea what you're signing up for, and you're just gonna put all your info in there exactly exactly. And there's that that detail you mentioned about being observed is so creepy because she found out this Facebook message that the person who invited her I've been watching it the whole time. So she got spooped and she asked that the group deactivate her membership. So this is where we get like to the Coe pendulum, has the performance become real? Point? She says, when I left, I became a security risk. People I knew made vague threats that I would regret leaving or talking about it. A roommate of mine stopped telling me where he was going when he left the house. Friends I trusted contacted me and played stupid about their own involvement in order to suss out what I knew. That's wild, Like imagine imagine you can't like imagine you go to Disney World and you're supposed to spend a week there, and you go for a day and you're like, all right, I'm not gonna go and then you like, you go home early, and the next day you get these weird calls and messages from your friends who are like, better not talk about disney World. Keep keep The first rule of Disney World is you don't talk about Disney World. Yeah. I don't think that those parks would function that way if that was. I love it, though, it's like the uh think in my head, it calls you late at night. Come on. Although, isn't there that secret members only club at Disney World. Yeah, that's my secret, you know. But yeah, it's supposed to be nice. The menu seems cool. I want to stay on Rebecca Power, just for a moment. So one of the other things that she really didn't like there is that she went to an actual gathering, one of these things they called practice or a practis praxi, and someone there essentially Dockster, not really but just you know, mentioned they knew what she did and knew who she was, but it was said aloud. That's one of the main reasons that she left and the really interesting thing about Rebecca is that she continued this kind of work afterwards. She started a thing that had a different name at the time. It's changed names, but now it is called Hoax h O a X. It is in it's in San Francisco, and it's the same kind of thing. It's a company that creates experiences. They're they're an interactive design studio and they like to create quote novel situations and powerful experiences. So the same kind of thing. She continued on to do that stuff, just outside of this other group Nonchalance. That's a very good point, man. Uh So, now we're reaching the end, and we talked in past tense. You see some of the problems. Some people are worried about their own privacy. Uh some people have what they feel are ethical objections to the business model. And then also you can understand this from the perspective of the employees of Nonchalance and the people responsible for making these experiences. They might feel kind of underappreciated, like, hey, man, I gave you a thing. I'm just trying to I'm trying to keep it going, you know, And I mean you can't be like you can't go to the sandwich shop, get a get a free sandwich every day and expect those sandwiches to just appear. Um, we have to. It's a terrible comparison, but you get it. So after the membership fee roll out, there's internal division within nonchalance. Employees resign, and then Jeff Holl sanctions and article about the society where he says various critical things or various not you know, super happy fun times, holding hands, singing Kumbaya things about the organization. And this itself is a violation of that absolute discretion policy, is it not. In less than a week after that article publishes, Jeff shuts down the website. He leaves a note that the San Francisco House of Latitude is closed and the Society closes down on Monday, September. Uh. This was news reportedly to several of the employees involved. Has happened, you know, recently in the days of the pandemic. Some people just showed up to a job that no longer existed, which is a massive bummer, It really is. I do just want to point out too. I think we've made it pretty clear, but a lot of these things, this idea, of these rules quote unquote, are very loose, and it's not like there's a set like a code of ethics or conduct, you know. I mean, even their whole idea of of discretion uh is ironic in a lot of ways because like it's a secret, but it's also tell your friends. So it's it's very loose, all of this stuff, and and and to the point where it's clearly meant to be a bit of an ironic performance art thing, almost commenting on the types of the way social media works, uh. And and the kind of you know what you're what you're saying then about how exclusivity in and of itself makes things more attractive. And now we've got things like this new social media platform, uh Clubhouse that's once again based entirely on exclusivity, and it's very much a Silicon Valley thing that's about networking and being more anonymous, less tied to your persona, and more just based on the worth of the things that you say to other members. UM. So I think there's there's a lot of that that's sort of some of the folks that really started taking this seriously seemed to have maybe maybe have been lost on them a little bit, which is interesting to me because again, it's the definition of what this is changes based on the perspective of the people and their degree of involvement. So after Jeff Hole closes down Latitude Society egoes on Facebook and you post an update. Uh. Some people copied and pasted it, and then the reactions were mixed. Some folks were like, you know, I get it, um, and I sympathized with you. Some people were angry, don't you're ruining the game or you're ruining the community that I've come to love. Uh. The whole rights the following He says, I've been rolling a boulder up a hill for four years and it kept getting heavier. It was my most audacious undertaking besides parenthood, and getting to the top meant success. Recently, as my shoulders began to give out under the weight, I looked around and seeing no relief in sight, I decided to do the most healthy thing I could possibly do. Let go, Oh man, where do you think that boulder went? I wonder what's on the other side? You know, to the third game? Right, that's right. You go throughout the cities of the United States that you're you're searching for. It's what a twenty foot tall boulder that's just rolling downhill somewhere. Yeah, randomized locations, the pieces are there, will workshop it. Yeah. So he writes this thing on Facebook, and then he also writes a large post on the website, which is the latitude dot com And if you go to the way back machine at archive dot org you can find it. It's https called slash slash, the Latitude dot Com slash book Slash one. And if you but then in you can find this thing that he wrote called Epilogue from the San Francisco House, and you can get a lot of the info in there, and you can really read at least Jeff's version of events and how how the whole thing ended and why, And you know, he said, it'll be an enduring, an escapable mystery. How a game built to offer shared whimsy inspiration play can result in trauma for the people most closely involved would feels like an acknowledgement of the of the conflicts that the employees had. On the night the society closed, about a hundred people went to to a local bar that's important during that first mission, the Sycamore, which I mentioned earlier, uh, and they got together they commiserated. Um I believe many of the former members or people who have met one another through this remain friends today, which is awesome. Uh, It's sad it was an abrupt end to such a bold endeavor, but again, people still remember their times. Their experiences in the group left an impression. And you know, like your to your point about Rebecca Power, this is likely not going to be the last thing of its sort, because I don't. This is just my opinion here. I think this stuff is cool. I would I like the idea as long as no one's getting hurt, you know, full speed ahead. But what do you think? What what you guys glean from this? Would you participate in something like this? If you got a mysterious on the loop or no, it needs to be better than an envelope? What would it be? Dude? If I get like that, I'm I'm going, I mean, I'm there, Please break me out of the thing a little bit. Uh. In on non chalance dot com n O n C H A L A n c E dot com slash about, you can read the mission mission statement essentially of Nonchalance and this is the way it starts. Picture in your mind a cartoon character sleep walking. Now it goes on to talk about this thing that they call divine nonchalance. This is this concept that the sleepwalking character somehow moves on through the city without ever getting hurt somehow because if they're just casually walking even though they're asleep, and nothing has hurt them just by chance. Really, what this is speaking to me, whether they're saying saying it or not, is imagine that we are all just sleepwalking in our day to day lives, and the what they are going to do is break us out of that, if only momentarily, with these kinds of experiences that they're creating, like the j June Institute. I think the thing they created, which is a whole could be a whole other episode or just you know, something for you to check out on your own that we won't spoil here. Um, it's worth your time. It's fascinating because we definitely spoiled the latitude society. Yeah, heavily spoiled that part. But this the efforts put in too changing people's minds slightly, to getting us to think a little differently by placing us in what they call a genuine space and giving us us a user and experience like this. I think that is genuinely worthwhile. I think you can you can create great change in an individual in a group of people that way. Uh, And it could be highly positive, but it could also but it could also be really dangerous because it feels like the same thing that Nexium did, but with the nefarious goals at the center of it, right, and with any cult that started, it's the same kind of thing. You're going to give somebody a little different experience and you're going to try and change the way they're thinking a little bit, remove part of that identity that's kind of weighing them down every day, and in this case, instead of shaping them too, then just constantly fund money, which they kind of did at the end there, right, like a startup. Um, it wasn't it wasn't that crazy, right, I don't know that. To me, this feels positive. Yeah, I think we're all kind of on the same page there. Like it does feel like overall and principle, these are cool things to have in the world. Bust out of the matrix, you know what I mean, hack your cognition in your perspective. What's what's not to love? But it is so fascinating because these things are possible and they're worth doing. We'd love to hear your opinions or your experiences with things like this, because I'm sure there are more examples of this phenomenon out there. And also question folks listening today, Uh, if you were creating something like this, what sort of experience would you give people? And maybe the maybe the other question, the other side of the coin here is when do endeavors like this go too far? Let us know. You can find us on the internet. Where on Facebook? Or on Twitter? Where on Instagram? 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