113 - Cicada 3301

Intelligence agency recruitment tool? Alternate reality game? Cult indoctrination? Masonic conspiracy? Nerds being nerds? Non-lethal weapons testing? Cicada 3301 is one of the strangest of all the internet mysteries. In 2012 a picture was posted on 4chan claiming that a shadowy organization was looking for "highly intelligent people" and that there was a message hidden in the picture, from there internet sleuths were led down a seemingly never ending rabbit hole of harder and harder cryptography puzzles which incorporated the writings of William Blake, Aleister Crowley, and William Gibson among others (as well as a book code in a collection of medieval Welsh myths). It got weird. And it continues to be weird, although for entirely different reasons. This is one of those topics that will definitely be coming back up in the future. But for now, we're looking at the three "official" cicada puzzles from 2012 through 2014.Also this too was recorded before I fixed the audio driver issue. IM SORRY.Support The Nonsense Bazaar on Patreon and help fund our own PSYOPs (they're the fun kind, we promise).https://patreon.com/thenonsensebazaar