Bryan's Coffee Date – 10/27

Why would he say she’s alive but not show her and then go dark?! ?

Why is coffee so SUS now ?

So, I asked in the Slack: Why not show us Joyce?

The Facebook video was just on Bryan. He told us Joyce was alive, but there was no video or other evidence of it.

Why not show us Joyce? Is it because she’s dead? Is it because Briarburg IS real? Is this all a big lie that’s supposed to make us feel comfortable. A lie to make us feel safe? This isn’t a game, it never has been. People don’t come back from the dead.

The thing about words are… They’re cheap

I just need my friend back.
I don’t care about the rest.

Some possibilities:
1. Joyce is actually alive, which Mason has hinted at, and there’s some reason she can’t be seen (in hiding from OSDM?)
2. Bryan was somehow drugged/helmeted and THINKS he saw Joyce alive
3. Bryan was compromised and is simply throwing us another lie

@chelsea I thought the same. If someone you cared about, who you’d been led to believe was murdered, suddenly is revealed to be alive, hell yeah you’d be confused, but you’d also be thrilled, right?? Bryan just seemed confused.

Another thought I had that I brought up in slack…Mike bought Brad coffee, Brad bought Cristen coffee…did Cristen buy Brad coffee (@wanda102, did you?)?? Is that somehow a trigger??

So Bryan was given 2 choices and decided to make his own choice.

Funny thing about that.
We are often told we have choices but they always are a step ahead of us. They always know us better than we know ourselves and what we are going to do.

We are never given a choice, simply the illusion of one.

So are you saying they knew Bryan would make the choice not to go dark and they were testing him? He did vocalize that we could do this… If so, having Mason call, then Joyce as an extra test (after everything else) is kinda brilliant.

Also I wonder if we should pay attention to Joyce saying, “you don’t have to listen to what THEY tell you.” Who is THEY?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by Sage.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by Sage.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by Sage.

First – thank you @chelsea for starting the topic and posting the various Periscope links. Here’s what went down in text format:

Around 6pm tonight I received a phone call from @wanda102, who said she needed to meet me at 7:15 tonight. We picked a coffeehouse in Hollywood (this is the caffeine chapter, apparently) and I walked in at the appointed time. Cristen was in all-black, and looking more deadly serious than I’ve ever seen her. I would not like to be on the receiving end of that stare on a regular basis, Cristen, so remind me to not piss you off.

She slid a piece of paper across the table, and was gone. I unfolded it: a time, and an address in the Valley.

I drove through some apocalyptic traffic, listening to the Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross cover of the “Halloween” theme because I have no sense, and walked into the coffee joint a couple minutes early.

I looked around, and didn’t see anyone I recognized at first. Then I saw a woman with dark hair and a smiling face in the corner.

I actually didn’t realize it was Joyce at first. There were a couple of people I was worried I might run into tonight, but Joyce Carlberg had never crossed my mind, and given what happened to her before… my brain just couldn’t quite grab onto the concept. Eventually I realized it was her, though, and went over and gave her a hug. (Joyce hugs are still the best.)

She had an empty cup of tea and a marked-up copy of the article I published this morning on the table. And my reaction was simple joy. I’d obviously taken her death pretty hard, and it was just so damn good to see her face again that I couldn’t quite believe what was happening. She opened up by saying how much she’d loved the #TeamJoyce t-shirts — @kevin and @wanda102, I told her her about the extra we made for her — and that she appreciated the support. She then told me how meaningful it had been for her to see my extreme reaction when I learned she had “died.”

About that dying thing… Joyce said that “we” (whether OSDM, her and Mason, Michelle, or someone else was unclear) had done that to stoke a fire; to see just how angry I could actually get. But she had noticed that in the article I never mentioned being angry about getting manipulated.

I went with the truth: Yes, this Experience has made me angry at times, but I’ve actually liked that. I’ve found it liberating.

That’s when it came time for the video. She told me she was going to broadcast something and wanted me to say where I was and who I was with. For those wondering why Joyce wasn’t in the video: I asked her if she was going to reverse the camera, and she waved me off. And the entire time we were discussing this video, she kept looking over my right shoulder. I had visions of me talking to her phone, and then getting hooded mid-broadcast. It was weird.

So I did my little bit that was on the Lust Facebook page, Joyce said I probably had many different emotions to process, and that we’d talk again soon. Then she left.

It was so abrupt and weird I really didn’t know what to do at first. I walked around the place, then tried following Joyce out the back entrance, but she was already gone.

By that point the initial joy had started to subside, replaced with a queasy unease. The way I could figure it: Mason and Joyce were working together, the entire death had been to manipulate me, so while I was happy she was alive, she was somebody that had nevertheless deceived and manipulated me.

It was complicated.

Then I went back to my car, and started that initial Periscope. I was still confused and a couple minutes in I got a No Caller ID call: Mason Silver. He told me stop talking about how I’d ended up at the shop, and to go dark for 24 hours. “Why, Mason?”

“24 hours.” Click.

If Joyce and Mason were working together, I figured, then maybe it made sense to stay quiet. And if I’m totally honest, it was fun and a little exciting to see the furor while I was staying mum. (But it was also a little isolating. I feel like I have a better understanding of how some of our fellow participants have felt in similar situations.)

Then on the drive home, I got another No Caller ID call: Joyce, wondering why I wasn’t talking about our meeting. I told her about the Mason call, and she said “Well Bryan, do you always do what THEY tell you to?” It was such a blatant button-press, but I immediately had that huffy, adolescent, “Hell no I don’t!” reaction in my head. I tried to get more information on who “they” were, or how she and Mason were aligned (and with whom), but nothing. She just once again told me to think about whether I always do what “THEY” tell me, and hung up.

That’s when I realized the entire thing had been about manipulation – and pointing out said manipulation. Joyce’s death had been one. And here I was with two sucky choices: submit to Mason Silver, or let the easy manipulation Joyce was using have its impact.

Neither was good. Neither felt right. Nothing made sense. And I felt very, very confused.

By the time I got home, I realized that letting either one of them — and I do think they were tag-teaming me tonight — determine what I did next would be a mistake. The only way I could move forward honestly would be to set aside both considerations, and simply do what I would do if I wasn’t being toyed with. And that’s share what happened with the community.

Now, I have a couple thoughts after all of this:

-It seems pretty obvious that Mason and Joyce worked together to fake her death (and perhaps still are).

-Given that they were trying to amp up my anger issue, this at least raises the possibility that Mason is OSDM/HCDI alongside Joyce.

-When all of this was going down, the @a account in Slack was trying to get people to think I was lying. I think this was a coordinated effort, that included Joyce (who didn’t put her face on camera), Mason (who wanted me dark while @a sewed doubts and suspicious took hold), and then @a himself (who could have been Mason in Slack for all we know). So… somebody wants the community to think I’m untrustworthy – which has been a thing since the blackmail attempt in March.

Other than that… there’s just an awful lot to process. I got a glimpse tonight of just how easily manipulated all of us can be — and likely have been this entire time. And it is terrifying.

Manipulation is a funny thing. When you’re trying hardest to escape it, that’s when you’re most vulnerable.

Even so, the fact that Mason told you to go dark makes me wonder if he told Mike, Brad, and Cristen the same thing. Would those three care to comment?

@bcbishop my look, it wasn’t anger, I swear. There was a task to do. It’s been a confusing week for a lot of us, but hey, she’s alive. She’s ALIVE. Now isn’t that somethin?

@bcbishop I think the big takeaway here, for me, is your persistence in remaining present, aware, and restraining your mind from overpowering your emotions. I hope to emulate this going forward.

They (with a capital T) really don’t ever make it easy for you @bcbishop, do They?

This night (heck, this whole week) brings up a lot of unsettling and confusing things. We’re seeing more friends pull away from the pack in one way or another and it’s taking a toll on everyone. I’m also just more clueless than ever about who to believe. I’m not necessarily saying that you were lying about anything tonight, Bryan. But someone is lying. Or more likely lots of someone’s are.

Things seem to be spinning out of control. Maybe it just looks that way because that’s all that we can see. The chaos is all just another form of Their carefully orchestrated manipulation. The other option is that things really are a terrifying mess right now and like 5 crazy people are pulling all the strings and making everyone’s life a ridiculous mess.

Either way, as usual, we are in the dark.

This is all so incredibly confusing. I have honestly been feeling some guilt over Joyce’s death after I felt like I didn’t push her warnings about Mason/ took her call as a direct threat just to learn she was right about him…But they seem to be obviously toying with us all while they play these games. I can’t even imagine how you’re feeling after all of this, @bcbishop thanks for choosing to keep us all informed.

I’ve been turning last night over in my head and trying to make sense of it all. I can’t. Not yet. What I do recognize is that I’ve gone from a place of feeling quite certain about where I stood, and how I feel about certain people in this world, to suddenly feeling… unmoored. Adrift.

There was no way I was going to discover Joyce was alive without feeling a queasy mix of joy and betrayal. Particularly not when the only explanation was “we wanted to see how mad you’d get!” And particularly when we don’t yet know who was pulling the strings with Cristen and everything else (though given this week, I think there are some easy guesses).

Joyce hitting upon me not being angry about being manipulated seemed designed to do one thing: remind me that I was being manipulated. And then she and Mason put me into a situation where I truly had no agency. No matter what I did, it was the result of more manipulation.

I’d like to say I was super confident and owning my path when I Periscoped last night. But that’s not true. I just didn’t know what else to fucking do.

On top of it, I recognize that some forces are trying to split us up and make us doubt each other. Obviously, that’s already been happening for a while now, but it appears it’s only going to continue.

And I think that’s why I couldn’t sleep last night. We’ve talked about lack of walls and reality blurring. But I’ve often thought of that in terms of constructs: we don’t know where one ends and the other begins, or when a Mason may jump into our daily life.

With @111error, @Mike, and everything else this week I think we are entering a place of purely emotional blurring – where we truly won’t be able to separate out our feelings about our friends, and these larger manipulations, from each another.

For the first time, I’m truly scared.

@bcbishop This is tough for everyone I think. The idea of believing people, as well as being believed. Trust is important but not always gospel, and I’m sorry you’re going through this. For what it’s worth: My strings don’t feel pulled.

What a bonkers night. Joyce is alive! But her “death” was all just to fuck with people? If her death was faked, Mason had to be in on it, so they’re working together (which would sort of indicate they’re both OSDM). Now they’re giving @bcbishop conflicting directives, the hell? As with everything in this, the lines kept blurring and blurring last night until it was all a muddled mess. I should have been elated that Joyce was alive and I was, but like the lines, it was muddled. A healthy dose of confusion mixed with some unease at the blatant manipulation.

Speaking of manipulation, was that all those calls from Sabrina were about a few weeks ago? Manipulating people into feeling guilty? Or did she really not know her friend/colleague/whatever was alive? If that’s the case, why wasn’t she aware?

So, I asked in the Slack: Why not show us Joyce?

Why not show us Joyce? Is it because she’s dead? Is it because Briarburg IS real? Is this all a big lie that’s supposed to make us feel comfortable. A lie to make us feel safe? This isn’t a game, it never has been. People don’t come back from the dead.

I think a lot of this is going to come down to faith and belief. Do we believe what Bryan (and all of the others pinned by Be Silent) have told us? Are distrust and non-belief the path of least resistance? We’ve got no real reason to believe everyone right now, especially as they get more sus each day, but maybe that’s what’s going to make it the more difficult path to walk? So that said, I believe Bryan, I believe he met with the bonafide Joyce, and I believe the whole play was designed to manipulate emotions with calculated precision.

This is all just too much.

There are three people I trust explicitly and @bcbishop is one of them. He’s never given me reason to distrust him so if says Joyce is alive, she’s alive.

So now what Bryan? Where does your path lead you now because I’m not sure I’d trust Joyce at all. She manipulated you in to thinking she was dead just to get a reaction, to see how mad you’d get!?! That’s some real fucked up shit right there. And, who is she in cahoots with? Mason? Because if so, that’s even more fucked up.

I must say, to learn of Joyce’s return is, in many ways… comforting.

Faking her death. That’s so Joyce!

I wanted to amend this post here because I’d left out a bit in the fracas of the past week. Before @bcbishop met with me, I was driving home from work and received a call from our friend Mike who said he’d been instructed to tell me to calm Bryan and tell him I needed him to meet me at 7:15 at a place of my choosing, dressed nice. I was in my work clothes so I had that handled, thanks for saying I looked super serious in black tho, Bryan. My clients think so too.

Anyhow the relevant bit is that Mike set this meet, and also Brad’s with Larry the weekend after this, ostensibly at the behest of someone else. He gave me the address to pass to Bryan and also instructed me to not say a word and give him the info only when it got extremely uncomfortable at the table. Thank god I’m skilled at that.

So. Apologies that I neglected this bit, but there’s another wrinkle to our latest mystery, huh?

I have suspected that picking sides was a distraction and that it was all part of one thing – BOS or the System or OSDM or whatever, all the same. We were supposed to pick sides and fight while they did whatever it was they were doing, and it worked. Things have started to make sense lately that support this. I think we should think about one theory that drops the idea of anyone fighting against or for anything and unites everything that has happened since February as coming from the same source. I think now that the only truth is that we are the assets. The rest is a fiction meant to keep us here.