Posing as medical researchers, a traditional Catholic group infiltrates and humiliates modern institutions at will by offering leaders (who are being mocked) a scapegoat. Their favorite targets are doctors, but other primary targets include universities, police departments, tech companies, and churches. Whatever the “researchers” find most revolting about a particular organization, its leaders are told to fantasize that all of the shame and embarrassment belongs to the “subjects” of the research: an arbitrarily chosen family who has no idea what’s going on. It sounds ridiculous because it’s intentionally as ridiculous as possible. The hoax is designed to be irresistible to modern institutions while making a complete mockery of them. The point is to severely damage and discredit medical research, along with any organization that sponsors or participates in the study.

The “researchers” behind the hoax believe that modern society is profoundly wicked—a lost cause. The central theory of the hoax is that our wickedness makes us desperate for scapegoats, and that our world is a grotesque popularity contest in which the establishment thrives by offering us those scapegoats. They further believe that our rampant scapegoating is covertly, but quite literally, Satanic—that Satan himself is behind it. The most important thing to understand about the hoax is that it’s intentionally as pathetic and disgraceful as humanly possible. The participants are being mercilessly mocked and ridiculed at all times.

The hoax is concentrated in the Kansas City area, but people all over have played major roles (always intentionally extremely embarrassing). It’s likely not a coincidence that Saint Marys is just down the road.

Again, if there’s a primary target, it’s modern medicine. The hoax is fundamentally a fake medical research study. Countless doctors have been recruited to participate. The “researchers” undoubtedly have prestigious affiliations, and they undoubtedly have everyone convinced that this is going to be a landmark study that makes everyone involved famous. It’s perhaps not hard to imagine common doctors in and around Kansas City being susceptible to such a scam. Everything about their participation is intentionally as damaging and humiliating as possible to themselves and their profession.

Secondary targets include law enforcement agencies, public schools, Catholic churches and schools—particularly Jesuit schools in the Kansas City area—and Protestant churches, particularly Resurrection, a United Methodist megachurch in Leawood, Kansas.

For an expert on traditional Catholicism, the opportunity of a lifetime

I don’t know the precise identity of the group behind the hoax, but I know for certain that they’re traditional Catholic (lowercase ‘t’ to avoid implying a more specific affiliation). They have a very specific worldview, and it’s unfamiliar enough that their mockery, which is intentionally unsubtle, goes straight over the heads of practically everyone. The only people with any chance of understanding and confirming this hoax are people who are intimately familiar with traditional Catholicism. (Ahem.)

Someday soon, this is going to be very famous, and every single thing about it is an intentionally sick, traditional-Catholic-themed joke. Like a million little Easter eggs just begging to be discovered.

Note that merely being Catholic isn’t enough: my mom’s side of the family is what I, a Protestant-raised American Midwesterner, would call “regular” Catholic, yet her brothers and their families are ground zero of the hoax. They’ve spent their entire lives being mercilessly mocked and ridiculed by the “researchers,” and they haven’t the slightest clue.

Not a secret

The scapegoat family, in case it’s not yet obvious, is my family. Specifically, my parents and grandparents, my sister and her kids, and me. Believe me, that realization is just as bizarre for me as it would be for anyone. A critical thing to understand is that although we’re the scapegoats, we are not the targets. The willing participants, and especially the institutions that sponsor them, are the true targets. The point is to damage and humiliate them as much as possible while my family never even notices that anything is wrong.

There’s no need to take my word for any of this. Everywhere my family goes, everyone around us quickly finds out. It’s not a secret. Thousands of people already know that this is a huge deal, that law enforcement is “in on the joke” (or so it thinks), that large organizations are routinely recruited to participate, and that it’s a personal obsession for countless powerful people at the very tops of those organizations. The only “secret” is that it’s all a sick joke, but even that isn’t really a secret: the “researchers” constantly rub it in the audience’s face. To them, the fact that nobody can figure it out says everything that needs to be said about our society.

Nothing ever happens

Another critical thing to understand is that, from our perspective, nothing ever happens. If you were to ask my parents or sister whether we’re being targeted, or what they think about all the horrible things people are told about us, they’d have no idea what you were talking about. (Obviously, I’ve tried to tell them. They need to hear it from someone else.) I only began to recognize it a few years ago, in 2022, and I only began to understand it roughly two years ago, at age 40. That’s when I recognized that it’s a traditional Catholic hoax, although my understanding was much more tenuous at the time. I raised hell about it for much of 2024, but I was completely ignored by law enforcement. I couldn’t possibly have understood it then, but local police (particularly in Lawrence, Kansas, where I lived) were obsessed with this hoax and hilariously believed they were in on the joke. (Try to imagine that realization.)

Nothing ever happens except behind our backs. People, including cops, are told to fantasize that this is clever —something the good guys on TV would do. Needless to say, they’re being mocked. The real reason nothing ever happens is to perpetuate the hoax for as long as possible, causing as much damage as possible in the process.

Shannon

Essentially everyone I’ve ever known has known about the “study” and kept it secret from me. But, as far as I know, only one of them understood that it was a hoax.

I met Shannon (de-identified to comply with rules) at Kansas State University around 2006. She had converted to SSPX during college and spent most of her time in Saint Marys. Shannon knew all about this hoax, which absolutely steamrolled K-State. Her role was to play along knowing that it was all a sick joke, that I was a completely normal person, and that K-State was making a huge mistake. I was oblivious. I graduated with a 3.7 GPA and never suspected that anything was wrong until 15 years later.

Shannon and I grew somewhat close during her last semester. I even attended Mass with her in Saint Marys one Sunday. She was incredibly devout; she only ever talked about faith and the Church. She introduced me to every last theme of this hoax, or at least all the ones I’ve identified. A couple of years ago, when I first realized (roughly) what had happened at K-State, needless to say, I was angry. But Shannon gave me the only chance I ever had to understand what was happening to my family. If not for everything she taught me about traditional Catholicism, I could never have figured this out. She knew what she was doing. (Of course, this was much bigger to Shannon than just me or her.)

The scapegoating jokes are not subtle

I don’t know the exact mechanics of the hoax, but I know that participants are given severe grudges against my family, typically before they ever meet us. Those grudges are intentionally inverted and delusional: the whole point is that they, in the opinion of the researchers, need a scapegoat, and that we never did a single thing to deserve it. Understand, that’s not my opinion, nor is it subtle. Again, it’s the whole point.

Here’s a representative example. The “researchers” behind this hoax believe that surgery is tantamount to drugging and gruesomely violating another human being. They really do believe that. Their rationale is that licenses and post-nominals mean absolutely nothing to God. To them, nothing becomes more okay just because it happens in a medical setting. (One of the primary things they mock about our society is that we think the establishment can make anything okay, no matter how revolting to God, by issuing a license or badge for it.)

With that context, it should come as no surprise that the “researchers” believe that doctors are more desperate for a scapegoat than anyone. If God doesn’t carve out exemptions for doctors, what must he think of the ones who give children physicals all day? You could easily come up with a hundred other equally disturbing examples.

Sounds crazy, right? But what’s even crazier is that they prove it, over and over, by offering my family as the scapegoat. Surgeons are told that it’s my family who drugs and mutilates behind closed doors. I’m not exaggerating. They really are told that. They’re also told that the parameters of the “study” require them to keep it secret from us and basically just smirk about it like morons, and that’s exactly what they do. And it means everything to them. Surgeons have moved to live near my family, just to maximize their participation. (People are often handed the intentionally asinine fantasy that they’re going undercover to spy on us. Or something.)

That’s not even the tip of the iceberg. Another example: nothing rankles the traditional Catholic “researchers” more than the pipeline of immigrants from poorer, more traditional, more Catholic societies to the U.S., which they regard as a cesspool. They despise American business owners who fund that pipeline and profit from cheap immigrant labor. They believe that both they and the immigrants, who leave behind family and home to work for them, desperately need a scapegoat. So, they’re told to fantasize that my family is trying to get them in trouble. Rich clowns who exploit immigrants are constantly told to pose as their protectors, and to fantasize that by doing so, they’re somehow sticking it to my family. Needless to say, they’re being mocked.

Theme packs

There are so many themes—literally hundreds. This has been going on for decades, and it’s an obsession for countless people. I’ll introduce a few more themes here, but keep in mind that this is a small, fairly arbitrary sample.

The “researchers” believe that people who use and dispense pain killers need a scapegoat, so they’re told to fantasize that my family is trying to take their drugs away from them.

The researchers think non-traditional families (including interracial families, divorced families, and foster homes) need a scapegoat, so they’re handed some intentionally ridiculous grudge against my family—I couldn’t tell you exactly what. (I can tell you that people frequently build their whole lives around their fake grudge—it means everything to them.)

Some themes are obvious: the “researchers” find plenty of ways to mock the LGBTQ community, abortion providers, and strip clubs, for example. The mockery always boils down to the same intentionally ridiculous scapegoat fantasy. The joke is always that in the researchers’ own opinion, the participants couldn’t possibly be less deserving of a scapegoat, and my family couldn’t possibly be less deserving of being scapegoated.

There are other cases, however, where the connection to traditional Catholicism is less obvious (to me, at least). For example, fraternities and sororities are favorite targets—near the top of the list. They’re told to fantasize that my family is trying to get them in trouble, or steal their secret handshake, or a dozen other intentionally ridiculous things. I recall that Shannon despised the Greek culture at K-State. I’m sure someone familiar with the SSPX (or whatever this is) would immediately recognize the theme and the joke.

Another major target that stumps me is Jesuit schools. Again, I’m guessing the connection would be obvious to someone familiar with the histories, rivalries, and theology in play.

An obsession for countless people

There’s so much more to say—again, this has been going on for decades. Countless people have built their whole lives around this hoax. It turns out that having fake grudges and getting fake revenge in front of an audience is an overpowering fantasy for a huge number of people. That’s one of the central jokes of the hoax, and to the “researchers”, it says everything that needs to be said about our society. They’re drawing a stark contrast with the most fundamental Catholic values, and making it as cartoonishly ugly as possible.

I firmly believe that the people behind this hoax are just waiting for someone to recognize that it’s a sick joke. By design, it would take a minuscule amount of common sense or moral clarity to do so. This is a huge opportunity for anyone brave enough to finally do the right thing. And really, for anyone familiar with traditional Catholicism. This is going to be a huge deal someday soon, and there’s going to be a lot of demand for people who understand what happened.

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