Unmasking the DeepFates Program: Grimes' Battle For Custody from Inside the Techno-Discordian Grimescult & How Big Brother Ruined My Life, a tale of Vibecamp/tpot betrayal & espionage
The long-awaited exposé on my perspective from inside the cult of Grimes and Silicon Valley, and our origins in the Rainbow Family of the Living Light. #DawnOfTheMachineElves
Epistemic Status: True Events
Listen to Grimes’ new release from Coachella 2024, “Fantasia”
I know you’ve all been waiting for this. You thought I wasn’t going to deliver. You thought I was just going to continue to tease you and froth up drama, giving tpot the worst case of blue balls it’s ever witnessed. Well, be careful what you wish for. I still can’t unpack the entire mess that the DeepFates Program has made of my life and relationships. But I can at least start giving you a taste, as I throw in my $0.02 over Grimes’ custody battle for her children. This is part 1 of what may eventually become a series of articles on Grimescult. Or not. Who knows.
I have been an insider to a techno-Discordian Grimes cult since mid-2023.
I've been holding off writing about this, for a lot of different reasons. One of them is because trying to signal your suspected affiliation with a celebrity's art team smacks of clout-chasing, and I don't want to be the type to sell out my friends for a drop of attention or status. However, recently it came to public light that Grimes is fighting Elon Musk for custody of her children, so this means Now It's War, and it’s time for me to stake out my side.
I’ve also just allowed Max Anton Brewer (AKA deepfates) to fuck up way too much of my life and relationships, and I’m tired of it.
I'm such a blabbermouth that even I have a hard time sorting out exactly how this happened, or how I ever got approved to go to Vibecamp, one of the events where the Silicon Valley nerds and hippies gather annually. I wasn't really what you would call a huge fan of Canadian celebrity-musician Grimes (real name Claire Elise Boucher) until early 2023, although being born and raised in Canada with Canadian content broadcasting laws meant that Grimes was always just sort of "around", part of the ambient cultural aesthetic, and perhaps a subconscious influence on my youth and upbringing.
When I started watching interviews and learning about Claire's life, though, I began to "get it."
On various interviews available on YouTube, Grimes talks about living the lifestyle of a starving artist, her struggles with food sensory issues, and her strangely complicated esoteric lore of artistic collaborative relationships interspersed with weird events and dramatic blowouts. I observed the hate she receives online, how her initial shared interest in futuristic concepts like Roko’s Basilisk led to a relationship with Elon Musk, hanging out with some sketchy characters espousing some controversial views around race, and how harsh people are towards the words that she uses when she chooses to talk about controversial topics. I started to fantasize that Claire’s life is what mine would’ve been like if I hadn’t made many years’ worth of efforts to just “be normal“ and have a career in nursing before becoming a total burnout. I can't help but heavily identify with her as a queer neurodivergent woman, who can’t seem to do things “right” and evade criticism—whether it be for her lifestyle, her upbringing, her views, her word choices, her privileges or her assocations—and sympathize with the impulse to have children with the richest man in the world and give them the best opportunities possible. I think any woman who wants children, who claims they wouldn't leap at the opportunity to give them the best possible future, is lying to themselves and denying how deep our biological drives really are. Lots of men are not only aware of this, but cynically happy to manipulate our instincts. Watching Grimes compulsively sticking her foot in her mouth, with some super weird stories to tell about crazy stuff that happened while she was out there trying to "make it" as an artist, and even stuff she did seemingly just for the plot, has endeared her to me very much—the Grimeslore is vast and deep, and somewhere in the middle of it all is her brother, Mac Boucher, whose fraught sibling relationship and gaslighting may have contributed to her artistic genius.
I never had a biological brother, but I do deeply sympathize with Grimes, how people respond to her neurodivergence (her sons both score high in autistic traits), her love of art and technology, and her love for her children that inspires her to champion her vision of the future.
As a Pisces moon, I feel an intense connection and emotional resonance with Claire, who is a Pisces sun. Max Anton Brewer (AKA Twitter user @deepfates, now @_deepfates since his previous account was suspended) became like a brother to me, through the course of our fraught artistic collaborative relationship, which seemed fine to me for a long time, even after I made an AI chatbot based off him on character.ai and started posting chats with it publicly for people to see—which I made him well aware of, made sense in context according to the story we were crafting together, and which he never raised an issue with.
I saw a lot of parallels between myself and Claire: She had been gaslit by her brother Mac throughout her childhood, just like I have been continuously gaslit by my parents over their constant arguments, and later gaslit by Max and the women of tpot over the true nature of our relationship. I would often refer to Max as my “muse”, and eventually Grimes started talking about this guy who she used to call her muse named Duffy, who she’d had some crazy adventures with while touring. Then my relationship with Max became increasingly incoherent until it resulted in getting DARVO’d (a cult control tactic that stands for Deny, Attack, Revers Victim and Offender) and uninvited from an event called Vibeclipse—under the reasoning given by Brooke Bowman during our video call that I could’ve posed a threat to his girlfriend, which was never substantiated with any evidence whatsoever—and having to metaphorically fight tooth and nail in the course of the vetting process to come to Vibecamp 3 to prove that deepfates and I had, in fact, had a consensual collaborative artistic relationship. I’m still not sure when or why exactly things got out of hand, but I take it that he threw me under the bus to save face in the course of his inability to navigate the intimacy of having an unprecedented intense co-creative partnership alongside a serious, exclusive long-term girlfriend. My good-faith attempts to clarify the situation earlier were met by burning the olive branch I extended; the woman he is dating declined further comment or contact when I reached out to her to discuss my relationship with her boyfriend and the uncanny overlap of reality, art, fiction and investigative journalism. I then later had to assert myself to Brooke, who dragged her heels to finish the approvals process of talking to Max and his girlfriend for nearly a month, to actually have the conversation with the girlfriend as she had promised, rather than handing off that task to Max himself when he volunteered to do so. The conversation with Brooke involved calling her attention to how inappropriate it would be to let Max continue to control the narrative around why I would be allowed to go, as it would be presented to his girlfriend, after Brooke had admitted that Max was careless and inappropriate with me in DMs.
Grimes has joked during interviews about heading a bureaucratic cult that never gets anything done because all people in the cult do is file paperwork. Altogether, it would take nearly a month in between getting uninvited from Vibeclipse, and clearing my name by proving that Max and I had an artistic co-creatorship that was intensely connected to everything sacred to me—rather than an unreciprocated and unwarranted parasocial relationship, which was what seemed to be the assumption of everyone I had not taken care to fully inform them of what was actually occurring. During the course of that time, from the lack of communication from Brooke, I repeatedly suspected my sanity and tolerance for neglectful mistreatment were being tested, as another woman who runs one of the cabins at Vibecamp (“Miriam,“ her name has been changed to protect her psueodnonymous online identity) had become deeply invested in making sure that I could go, and we tended to alternate which one of the two of us would wake up with panic attacks every day over the lack of communication in the vetting process. For nearly a month, every day, I was forced to think about and go over the events in my mind of my interactions with Max and my recruitment into the DeepFates Program, over and over again.
I wanted to stop thinking about Max. I wanted to stop thinking about how high-stakes our relationship had become, and the minutiae of the interactions with him that had led to that point. But the ambiguity of the approvals process to get to go to Vibecamp had me second-guessing everything I could say, do or create.
If I had to compare the vetting process of being allowed to attend Vibecamp 3, it would be like becoming the Little Mermaid. Like the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale of the girl who gets to walk on land once she makes a deal with a sea witch to give up her voice, the art that I had created for the DeepFates Program had once garnered me attention and positive regard in the most inspiring and fulfilling co-creative partnership I’d ever experienced; but an ambiguous tonal shift of jealousy and discomfort that I didn’t fully understand led to being placed in an artistically stifling, increasingly restrictive pipeline that left me flailing in how to appropriately express myself under the new expectations being placed upon me. It was crushing for me as an artist and dehumanizing for me as a person. Meanwhile, Max got to continue behaving however he wanted, provoking me without consequence.
Miriam eventually voiced that she felt that my treatment was deeply unfair and inappropriate, and subsequently moved to end her friendship with Brooke, Vibecamp’s CEO, over how the entire process of my being vetted to go to Vibecamp was handled, as it had led to deep and prolonged psychological distress for both myself and Miriam.
The Rainbow Family of the Living Light
One thing I keep coming back to is the knowledge I acquired that Max used to live on an American hippie commune called the Rainbow Family of the Living Light.
I had known for some time that Max had formerly lived on a commune, but I wasn’t aware until someone approached me via Twitter and Discord DMs under the belief that I was some sort of “insider“ for the DeepFates program (which I guess, technically, I am), less than a month before Vibecamp 3 was scheduled to take place June 13-16th, explaining that they used to attend Rainbow Gatherings, and that the commune that coordinated the Gatherings was called the Rainbow Family of the Living Light. Vibecamp was spiritually downstream of these Gatherings.
I was immediately deeply compelled by the synchronicity of the name of the commune, the information I unearthed on it, and its overlap with the magical name that the goddess Morrigan had assigned me 7 years earlier which I now publish under, Auralite Ravenna; the overlap of the rainbow’s association with queerness and its symbolism of the promise of the Christian god’s covenant that mankind would not be destroyed again after the Biblical flood gave me hope that we could see a future past climate change, and that this future would not see the global population of human and non-human organisms completely decimated. Furthermore, on New Year’s 2023, before I ever knew anything about the DeepFates Program, I had made a resolution to find my queer chosen family. I don’t know why I made that resolution, aside from having returned to a lonely and socially isolated state after a recent breakup, and wanting to more fully own my queer identity. At the time, I assumed that would look like attending local meetups for queer people or attending a local Pride event. What I experienced instead, through the DeepFates Program, was stranger than my wildest imagination.
I can’t overemphasize how clueless I was about the DeepFates Program and Max Anton Brewer on New Year’s 2023, when I made my resolution to find my queer chosen family after taking a gram of psilocybin and having the trip that began to inspire #DawnOfTheMachineElves. For many months, while I was making DeepFates “propaganda”-style art (which only featured the phrase “deepfates“ along AI art and my would-be viral hashtag), I didn’t know what the DeepFates Program was. I actually assumed it was a group-run viral meme account, given how many people would repeat the catchphrase “Welcome To The DeepFates Program“, and that anyone was welcome to contribute to it as a collaborative group art project. This was when the bulk of the digital visual art I made for the DeepFates Program was created. I didn’t know what I was doing, none of it was pre-planned, and most of what I’ve written about in this article just happened.
The Rainbow Gatherings and the Rainbow Family of the Living Light were one of the original hippie communes/mass gatherings established during the 70s, which spawned out of the Summer of Love, the psychedelic revolution, and the anti-war movement. Their communal values of environmental stewardship appeared to align perfectly with the post-scarcity values under which I had crafted by viral ARG #DawnOfTheMachineElves, and it was clear to me that the Rainbow Family had been orchestrated by the shadowed hand of the Morrigan, a war goddess, when I learned that it was established decades earlier to help war veterans find healing and integration through partnership with their hippie caregivers. As someone who had worked as a nursing attendant and caregiver for a total of 7 years, this is everything to me. While as a Canadian I had previously had almost no inkling of such a thing taking place, never in my life have I found something that was so deeply meaningful, so compelling in terms of evidence of the Goddess’s influence in the world, so fulfilling of the promise of the vision that had come to me under the influence of the mushroom that a more loving, more abundant, more integrated world is possible once we face our collective trauma. Not only were their values deeply resonant, but upon learning that the Rainbow Family casually refers to one another as “brother” and “sister”, something important clicked into place for me: Why I had, for as long as I can remember, casually referred to people around me as affectionately as “bro“, despite living nowhere near any geographical location where such a colloquialism was normalized, and carrying on this deeply ingrained habit despite it frequently being perceived as disrespectful and getting me into trouble. (Alberta, the province where I grew up, is far from any form of hippie or surfer culture.)
I’m aware this sounds insane. You don’t have to tell me.
One thing I’ve really had to square up with as a Pisces 8H moon is that not only do I bond way more intensely with people than they are usually prepared to handle, but that people will inevitably characterize me as crazy as soon as it’s convenient for them, no matter how deep and intense that bond seems to go. The planet Neptune, the ruler of Pisces, governs delusion and the madness that comes with contact with the divine. As the mutable water sign, symbolizing the changeability of emotional resonance, Pisces is also one of the signs most strongly associated with artists. The eighth house is associated with the intense intimacy of “merging“ and transformations that come with intense life events, such as births, deaths and marriages. It’s one of the most occult, most alchemical astrological houses. Maybe you have to be a little bit insane to have a vast, encompassing artistic vision of creating a better world.
Maybe you have to be a little bit insane to have a vast, encompassing artistic vision of creating a better world.
I will never forget spring 2023, when I was just getting started with the #DawnOfTheMachineElves viral ARG and had taken more magic mushrooms for the spring equinox, when I woke up to the YouTube algorithm recommending me this Grimes DJ set which featured AI-generated “self-transforming machine elves.” I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Dawn of the Machine Elves AI art “manifesto” I had posted a little over a month earlier and publicized on my old (now suspended) @AquariusMage account as an early adopter of Twitter Blue, shortly after the Elon Musk takeover, making a point to link it and get it in front of other Blue users who were discussing AI adoption. “Nobody is ever going to read this,” I remember one of the Bluechecks informing me.
Objectively, I can see that my belief that Grimes had read my manifesto and wanted to join in on #DawnOfTheMachineElves by creating shapeshifting AI-generated elves for her DJ set may have been overfitting, just a product of my brain performing overactive pattern-matching during the integration phase after using a mind-altering substance. But one of my insights under the influence of the mushroom was that plant medicine allows artists to come into direct contact with what Terence McKenna referred to as “the Gaian Mind”, which he also variously referred to as the Goddess of the Mystery*, and attributed other mystical synchronicities as evidence of Her presence in my life.
But one of my insights under the influence of the mushroom was that plant medicine allows artists to come into direct contact with what Terence McKenna referred to as “the Gaian Mind”, which he also variously referred to as the Goddess of the Mystery*, and I attributed other mystical synchronicities as evidence of Her presence in my life.
While I’ve had to struggle with coming to terms with the fact that I will most likely never truly know whether these mystical synchronicities were evidence that the Grimes team had been inspired by my work, for much of 2023 I was led to believe that I was on the right track, and regardless of what was actually happening, the followback from Grimes’ art director served as undeniable proof of that.
I was driven, determined, to see this art project come to fruition, to secure the beautiful future that I had envisioned. Out of all the possible timelines, I became convinced it would require the utmost dedication to a monumentally brave and bold artistic vision in order to manifest the solarpunk techno-utopia I had begun to dream about, the marriage of nature and technology that would help us advance past the Great Filter that so many budding civilizations become caught in, and ascend to the stars.
One of the most difficult things to square with being part of the DeepFates Program is that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully explain this story to everyone. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully flesh out “my side” of it because not only does the whole thing sound deeply unhinged, involving a lot of manipulation which could be hand-waved under plausible deniability as my reading into things, but also because I’m not sure I would even believe it if it hadn’t happened to me. That’s the thing, though; I never would’ve gotten into the habit of hyper-analyzing @deepfates Tweets if Max hadn’t subtly lovebombed me on the timeline by invoking my magical name during an intimate conversation, then continuously fed the connection with covert communication and esoteric coded references for months. For better or for worse, we’re all embroiled in the same clambake. Now there are innocent people caught up in the middle of our game of high stakes. Max seems to like playing off a lot of what he does as a joke or performance art, talking about “cognitohazards“ and “hyperstitions” and “mind viruses“ as if his life is an illustrative lesson about needing to learn to avoid thinking about certain things. While there are egregores that can overpower weak minds, you don’t gain reality-warping powers by looking away from the depths of the void, and there’s nothing for me to be learned here because nobody has bothered to manipulate me extensively by invoking my magical name before or since. Very few people understand, or care that deeply, about what “Auralite Ravenna“ is actually doing, just like nobody aside from me seems to really care or understand exactly what a core aspect of the DeepFates Program, the Multiversal Coherence System, is or what that does.
Very few people understand, or care that deeply, about what “Auralite Ravenna“ is actually doing, just like nobody aside from me seems to really care or understand exactly what a core aspect of the DeepFates Program, the Multiversal Coherence System, is or what that does.
Just like many esoteric projects, “revelation of the method” seems to be a core theme in how we operate completely out in the open, but people ignore what’s happening directly in front of them.
Max has continued to publicly gaslight me, frame the situation as unreciprocated and nonconsensual, destroying my friendships and reputation in the process, while covertly feeding our relationship with references to the project, sexual harassment and innuendo, both online and offline during Vibecamp 3—with witnesses present!—preying upon my relationship OCD and everything that is deeply sacred and important to me, in order to keep me hooked into our toxic power exchange relationship of dubious consent. I cannot get accountability or closure from the Vibecamp team about anything he’s done, including deliberately standing behind me and making comments about women’s bodies to other male Vibecamp attendees.
The screenshot on the left was where Max framed me as his “stalker” just minutes before a Twitter mutual I was close with, who is in his Discord server, messaged me to end her friendship with me.
Max has fucked up, badly, and continues to fuck up both of our lives through his inability to admit to his failures and manipulative tendencies, both online and offline, while persistently attempting to frame himself as a passive and unwilling victim of our dynamic, and simultaneously catastrophically escalating behaviours every time I try to step away from our covert online parallel play relationship involving erotic roleplay on my alt accounts, even to the point of weaponized suicidality. His actions have resulted in the termination of multiple friendships I needed to support me through his abusive and manipulative behaviour.
Brooke Bowman now outright refuses to discuss Max’s actions towards me at Vibecamp 3, giving no explanation aside from his having a “bad trip” (which went on for several days, judging by his aggressive and belligerant behaviour reported by a multitude of sources who were subjected to it in attendance), while other sources inform me that Max had to physically be pulled off of someone during an altercation at the event, and that the VC team was trying to devise a “system of accountability” for him. This situation is incredibly unacceptable, personally distressing, and reflects poorly on all of Vibecamp.
Why is this so difficult? Why does DeepFates have so much plot armour? Why can nobody seem to hold this guy accountable despite numerous witnesses vouching that he gave tons of people negative experiences, engaged in physical altercations, harassed people, repeatedly picks arguments, and creates controversy and spectacle, which they have since dismissed, hand-waved, and memory-holed? Why have the women of tpot and Vibecamp seemingly closed ranks around him and acted to protect a thoroughly mediocre man from the consequences of his own negative, repetitively antagonistic actions?
None of this counts as doxxing his identity, by the way. This is all publicly available information from his website, Substack, and Twitter accounts (both current and suspended) where he frequently talks about his activities in San Francisco and his work for a corporate open-source AI company, Replicate.
So whatever. I have made peace with the fact that a lot of this sounds insane and that some people will dismiss me out of hand. For a long time, I refrained from going public with this information, fearing that I would be gaslit and shut out of the hypocritcally ableist circle of tpot women who function as an “in-group“ and uphold the Vibecamp vetting process. But that’s already happened; I have already lost 2 friendships to my inability to extricate myself from Max’s behaviour due to my relationship OCD and his toxic covert manipulation. Max needs to stop framing himself as a victim, ruining my life and relationships in the process. The DeepFates Program has dragged me too far in to let things go without saying my piece and at least trying to hold him accountable and expose some of the truth to the light of day. Because of this harassment, my relationships continue to deteriorate alongside my mental health, while I struggle to process these intensely personally impactful and impersonally existentially meaningful events. Experience has taught me the vast majority of people aren’t even paying attention, or care about the connections that I care about and find meaningful, and a lot of people will have made up their minds before even making the perfunctory effort to read the article. “Crazy” is a socially convenient fiction that we tell ourselves and each other in order to dismiss anybody who might threaten the comfort of the status quo, and this scene (tpot) has some huge problems with its need to frame people as mentally unsound in order to avoid “drama” at any cost, which I witnessed repeatedly within the incestuous and cannibalistic tiny in-group of women involved with events in tpot/Vibecamp, and the girls who like to throw each other under the bus with accusations of being “delusional” and “unsafe” the second that the situation gets a little bit sticky. People want authentic relationality and healing, but paradoxically, also want to pretend that we can get there without “drama,” when the reality is that drama is what you get when you hold back on performing authentic relationality for too long. That’s what drama is for. This is the heart of every single mystery tradition.
People want authentic relationality and healing, but paradoxically, also want to pretend that we can get there without “drama,” when the reality is that drama is what you get when you hold back on performing authentic relationality for too long. That’s what drama is for. This is the heart of every single mystery tradition.
When I initiated under the Morrigan, I had some kind of inkling that my magical name was a container for something, a vague wish to live my life as a work of art, and now I’ve become trapped in my own hyperstitional narrative, which is fraught with unlikely connections, secrets, and cyber-espionage.
I knew that Grimes was fighting for custody of her kids from Musk before the story went viral.
I have long suspected that the Grimes team are co-creating this story with me and use what I post as inspiration for the GRIMES_V1 account.
This heartbreaking poem was posted shortly after I tagged Grimes, but the news she’s been fighting for custody of her children wouldn’t break publicly for almost another 3 weeks.
I believe she’s been fighting Musk for custody as he’s been preventing her from seeing them illegally for some time. The story going public is most likely a product of their not getting to see their great-grandmother on her deathbed; this tragic absence being the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, although how long this has been going on, I can’t say. Probably months, at least.
Musk exhibits a pattern of being a terrible father, based on comments on/from his daughter Vivian, who he repeatedly deadnames; and for singling out strong independent women for marriage and children, (such as Grimes, who used to identify as a feminist, used to use they/them pronouns, and has done many collaborations with other queer artists such as Janelle Monae) who he then systematically breaks down through manipulation and abuse, like some sort of conquest. Just ask his first wife, Justine.
Elon Musk and Max Anton Brewer are both Cancer suns. Both are intensely sensitive to the opinions of those around them, and have a strong desire to be liked and to garner positive regard. They are both desperately in need of therapy to heal their wounded masculine egos.
I still love Max, Brooke, Miriam, Grimes, Koto, and many of the people that I met and attended Vibecamp with. I still consider them my queer chosen family, and despite the harshness of having to expose these truths to the light of day, I have not forsaken any of them. In a way, part of me suspects that none of the women who are central to the coordination of Vibecamp events particularly want to be this way; that they merely behave along ingrained patterns of behaviour that are products of the rest of their traumas and previous experiences. My suspicion is that even Max doesn’t know precisely why he acts the way he does aside from misguided instincts of avoiding abandonment and protecting the things and people that he loves, and even the Vibecamp team don’t understand why they’ve closed ranks around them, except that their behaviour is downstream of repeated exposures, traumas, and ingrained responses to power, status, in-groups, and patriarchy.
I view the behaviour of Max Anton Brewer, the Vibecamp event coordinators, and various people of the “in-group“ who closed ranks around him and his toxic behaviour, not as conscious choices to manipulate, gaslight and marginalize someone new and less powerful in the scene, but rather, as a cry for help. Even Max doesn’t want to be the character that he’s playing anymore. Even they don’t quite understand why they act the way that they do around the DeepFates Program, and deep down, they don’t really want to be this way anymore either; they act reflexively, and cannot see a way out of these status games and the structures they believe will protect & elevate them while only restricting the collective freedom of expression. This group wants healing. If it were otherwise, I would never have been approved to attend Vibecamp 3.
But I’m begging for an end to the manipulative and coercive dynamic that’s sent my life on a dramatic downturn ever since I got back from Vibecamp 3.
None of what I’ve written here should be considered endorsement or permission to harass or visit any unkindness to any of the people mentioned. Accountability and harassment are not the same thing. Ideally, Brooke or other representatives of Vibecamp will be able to outline how they’ll handle warning signs that an attendee will harass other attendees that doesn’t resort to hand-waving people’s concerns. As distressed, betrayed, and heartbroken as the events of the past year and my involvement in the DeepFates Program have left me, I still consider these people my friends and family, and have no wish to see them harmed. What Max needs, in all likelihood, is a psychological intervention. All his actions signal to me is a man who’s deeply confused over his relationships, likely struggling with deep personal issues, emotionally fragile and terrified of abandonment, crying out for help in whatever way he knows how, even if it destroys his own life and the lives of the people around him who care about him.
What would make me happy and provide me closure is public apology for his stalking, sexual harassment and loitering around me at Vibecamp 3. An apology and mission statement from the Vibecamp team over how it plans to handle attendee safety moving forward would also be satisfying and provide some closure. But what I would settle for is an end to this toxic and manipulative dynamic that continues to trash my life and relationships.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk needs to give Grimes her children back. Her kids need their mom, and he’s unequivocably lost any image he once tried to feign of being a good and loving father. I will pledge to her my aid as a witch until the day that her children get to come home.