Prologue

## Meeting the Sinclairs

It was at the culmination of The Tension Experience, the invitation-only “The End” event in mid-November 2016, that mysterious cards were pressed into several hands just outside of the OOA compound, directing participants to www.thelustexperience.com - a holding page with social media links, which later became an email sign up form. On 1/15/17, The Tension Experience Facebook page posted "29".

The Lust forums go live on 2/13/17 and, without any real direction or guidance, speculation begins. @kipsie examines the source code and finds a message addressed to her: “Kipsie …maybe this is important, Feb 15, 7pm”.

At the aforementioned date and time, bots appear to start spamming the Lust forums, linking to a site that advertises The System. With the tagline "Stop asking for permission - take what's yours", this hyper-aggressive alpha-male-styled self-help series is headed up by Noah Sinclair. Many people request entry into this program. A few days later they receive an email back from either Noah or Sarah Sinclair with one of three responses; a few are either immediately accepted or denied access to the program, while the majority of participants are given a questionnaire to fill out to help further decide who will be selected.

Shortly after, two participants get calls to have meetings set up with Noah and have very different interactions with him at the 3/22 Meetings with Noah.

## Who is in control?

Following a dramatic launch party for The Tension Experience book, and during a period of high strangeness, participants receive information alluding to ouroborus, Confucius, libidinal states, and specular surface geometry. Shenanigans abound at SXSW with @bcbishop being stood up by Noah, and shadow accounts emerge on both the forums and social media. Participants start to believe that Clint Sears and Darren Lynn Bousman are no longer in control in the way they appeared to be previously. Following a few days where there are fears he is missing, there are multiple strange encounters with Darren including @bcbishop's encounter with him during the 3/22 Noah Meeting. Not long after this, Bryan (@bcbishop) also receives a strange email from Clint, including some information about himself that does not add up (Read the full email here). It is discovered that an image attached to the email has a warning hidden in the file information saying, “Trust me, walk the fuck away, Bryan. Now.”

Around this time, there are also mentions of The Investors being the ones that are actually pulling the strings. @theladyj gets a phone call from Marcos, an alleged investor, who asks her about The Lust Experience and how it has been for her so far in a quality assurance type of call. Participants are not even sure if this is "in game" due to its 4th wall breaking nature, but receive confirmation that he is indeed one of the Investors.

## Focus Group

On 3/29, the Facebook page posts the status: "90013 - Thursday - Only 1". @wanda102 is asked to choose someone for this one-to-one and she picks @julierei who is told a time. The Facebook page then posts a picture of the location, which appears to be The Last Bookstore. There she meets with Sarah Sinclair who invites her to a focus group that Sunday, and asks her to write down five names. She is given the choice of the five listed attending the focus group, or attending herself. She chooses herself meaning the five are not going to be allowed to attend.

Later that evening, “The Losers’ Club” (a group formed out of participants who received the rejection e-mail from The System) meet at a bar called Tiki No. While there, self-proclaimed leader of the “Losers”, @thebuz, receives a phone call from Noah who tells him that Buz will now be attending Sunday’s focus group and he is to pick four more people to join him.

The following day, @mike and @russell (of My Haunt Life) are asked by Noah to pick four more attendees. With one of their chosen participants unable to attend, a vote is taken by the community to fill the final spot.

With ten participants now selected, 4/2/17 sees the in-person event: Focus Group.

## Noah's Meltdown

As tension builds between Noah and Sarah Sinclair, participants start to theorize that it is actually Sarah who is in control of The System, with Noah merely the figurehead. This idea starts with the Focus Group event where participants saw Noah show up to the event apparently drunk and Sarah calling him out in front of everyone.

@lilmsfancpants has a meeting with Noah in the park where he is dressed as a homeless man and rambling about everyone in the park being robots (in a sense that they are under control). Shortly after this, an email from Sarah is leaked; she is upset about how her "dog was off his leash again" further confirming the theory that she is the one pulling the strings, not Noah.

Noah has a meltdown at the end of this periscope. The video starts out overtly normal with the Sinclair's acting like a happy couple that do not have any of the issues seen previously, and Sarah seems to be trying to convince everyone that The System is back on track. Noah goes on a rant about how everyone is ultimately alone and The System is here to teach you how to feel when "they" aren't doing it for you. Sarah can then be heard to say "that's enough" before she suddenly cuts off the periscope.

## IConfidant goes Live

A site called iConfidant is introduced by its founder, Stacey Erikson. Halfway between a friend-meeting site and dating site, iConfidant advertises that it will connect you to your new best friend.

iConfidant begins their Beta program with a bunch of iConfidant Calls going out. Through iConfidant, people start forming a pen-pal type relationship with anonymous Confidants, but from the beginning there are weird occurrences leading to speculation that participants may be interacting with artifical intelligence. @kasch gets rejected from the program due to aggressive emails being sent to Stacey Erikson from his email account, although they are not being sent by him (View emails).

## The End

The Prologue ends with an in person event called Registration. That same night @meghanmayhem has a meeting with Noah where she gets taken to a warehouse. At the warehouse, she goes live on periscope where Noah takes the phone and rants to his father, Horace Sinclair. The biggest implication here is that Horace may have been in charge of the OSDM or at least high up, and while holding up all of the sign up questionnaires from Tension, Noah says "Here’s all the precious, emotional data from your previous experiment". While he is talking, he has @meghanmayhem flip over some pieces of paper on the floor and, after telling us he is going to reveal what's really going on, we get a shot of what is on the other side of the papers: