How did you 'wake up'?

I was just wondering where other people began their journey towards the truth...

Mine started senior year, and i started dating this punk rock chick.. At the time, i only listened to rap cuz i was raised on it n was still in that whole group mentality of 'I can only like one genre of music' that i'm sure most of us went through.. Anyways, she gets me to listen to the classics first,Beatles, Zepplin, Sabbath, Doors, Hendrix and i instantly fell in love with these bands.. Well i started discovering all Rock was amazing and i was just an idiot..

Then i found System of a Down.. I had always liked the songs they played on the radio, but i heard one line-

"Lose small mind, you free your life." (or something close to it) from the song Aerials, and after that i was hooked.. I was literally addicted to SoaD and memorized every song but didn't really know the meaning behind most of them.. I started doing some research and using my brain and found out they were talking about life and politics and pretty much telling me the things i need to know and doing it in a fun and creative way..

So, after thinking about that, I would like to know how the rest of you came to being somewhat awake (At least enough to seek out others like us on ATS ). Was it Music? A personal experience?

As far as music goes, the earliest lyric I remember that went against what I had been brought up to believe was by the Beastie Boys:

"Well I figured out,
Who makes the crack,
It's the suckers with the badges,
And the blue jackets."

It planted the seed. It wasn't until several years later I started reading about the CIA's involvement in narco trafficking, etc. Of course by then I had already seen the movie JFK and that was another mind expander.

The rest is just an internal self-driving interest in these wide ranging conspiratorial matters. People are social, they work together to good things, and the work together to do bad things. The latter is what we call conspiracies.

I was a sophomore in HS and I found about 2012, then from there I came across the New World Order and it went from there.

when i heard that 1 bilion people is starving every day .

for me it was getting popped by the feds for being stupid.
i created a similar thread a while back.
i don't mean to derail this one, it's a great subject.
event that opened your eyes.

reply to post by Mizzijr


It's funny, i never heard about 2012 until the John Cusack (sp?) movie, but people were freaking out about..I had a christian couple that would rent at Blockbuster and they were trying to convince me that it was really going to happen.. I told them that it was from another religion and totally screwed with their heads...

Then i asked them, "If this was real, don't you think John Cusack would have picked a better movie to go out with?" and of course they just looked at me like i was stupid

Aerials such a tune. Love the video too totally creepy and brilliant!

I suppose from an early age I was always aware of certain elements of conditioning. For example when my older brother explained to me why toy adverts were on during kids TV programs, I know it sounds so simple, but at the time it was a totally new way of thinking about what I was watching. A very basic 'conspiracy.'

But when I really 'woke up' that was a long time after. It's mainly down to Trent Reznor and the Year Zero album. My avatar is a piece of art work from it. Basically it was a concept album envisioning a dystopian future in which a totalitarian American state had been established. I loved how we had to piece the album together via fragments of information, trying to gradually build the story for ourselves, the truth as it were.

Well needless to say things snowballed from there. Then I read the Truthseeker.co.uk's article on the truth about the Waco incident. Eventually and inevitably I came here, and I couldn't be happier with how it's all turned out!

reply to post by rubbertramp


Damn you must've been big time for two years.. I was doing the same until i found out i can basically get paid to go to school due to "#ed up life" grants

I'm sure we had similar #, but wasn't it amazing to find out there was more to life than all that? All my buddies are still caught in that lifestyle of gangbanging and just getting high all day playing video games, so hopefully this thread will give me ideas to wake their dumb asses up too

I think i woke up when I took Acid for the first time LOL. I think I woke up Politically when I saw Farenheit 911. Even though michael moore is a democrat, right left paradigm kinda guy, that movie did make me research things further.

Originally posted by Mizzijr
I was a sophomore in HS and I found about 2012, then from there I came across the New World Order and it went from there.

thats exactly the same path i went on, i saw something about planet x on youtube, showed an intrest, then expanded from there into the nwo, government , political issues, i was always interested in ufo's. but i have to say that 2010 has been the most mind opening year for me with regards to conspiracy...just unreal.

I woke up in 1992 when I listened to Rush Limbaugh for the first time. I always had conservative ideals and was even a Republican at the time. Rush just reinforced the reason why I was a conservative.

reply to post by squirelnutz


yup, i played and then paid.
trusted the wrong people, got in over my head, and then was taken down.
sucked, wouldn't recommend it for anybody.
twas an eye opener for sure.

edit, star and flag, even if you did steal my idea.lol.

I ironically 'woke up' after repeatedly being told by my fellow conspiracy theorist friends of the time to not believe anything without your own research or something like that, which led me to developing an increasing skeptical attitude towards things, and combined with schooling / gaining actual knowledge, began to see through the lies of every conspiracy theory I believed in.

True story.

reply to post by squirelnutz


I had a family that raised me to question everything concerning "entitlements" and that includes every THING and every person that gets what they get "just because." From there it took off to discovering how some groups of people undermine others.

I didn't get a full grasp on my childhood education until I went into the world on my own. I began noticing what did not make any sense. For instance: Why do I have to pay a huge amount of money to purchase a property only to have to pay the government rents and risk losing my purchased property? Why did we become so private that we no longer know who we live next to? Why does one group of people hold so much power that they can decide who is ALLOWED to live and who MUST die?

It was just little things like that before I began questioning the bigger things. Food: Why is it forbidden to grow my own fruits and vegetables or slaughter my own meat source? Why do I have to get a license to eat? Oops, I meant hunt, fish, and gather. Why does it cost so much to survive and so little to accumulate worthless objects?


Those were just a few of my questions that I have only one answer to all...Why? Because the conquered never realized the power they had. Nobody knows what the hell the future holds if we rise up and just say ENOUGH and NO MORE. Then again, the elsuive threat to life always hangs in the air. Sign up to die or die. Wow! Where is option C? [Forgive my sarcasm] Oh, that's right...Option C is like really having to make a decision and be held accountable for it!

"Everybody's going to the party to have a real good time. Dancing in the desert blowing up the sunshine....Where the f....are you?...Why don't the presidents fight the war? Why.. do.. they always send the poor? They always send the poor?... " Yeah, I like them too! So many people don't even care and that is what our social problem boils down to..

Riddle me this: Why is it ILLEGAL to commit suicide but you only have to pay the piper if you do not succeed? [Crazy as it sounds, but true. I know someone who had a really good lawyer and got the charges dropped. They may have found the loop hole and closed it up...But serious?] But it IS legal to kill someone ELSE if you are a member of one of the "special" groups.

Philosophy...gotta love it!

reply to post by squirelnutz


I woke up after an I.Q. test in fourth grade and TPTB set in on me as a prodigy,....only I didn't play along.
When my art pieces started being taken to "display" and were never returned.
5 years later my mother and a group from church started prying into the Bilderburg foundation.
I saw families destroyed and people suicide from the strain of knowing when no one seems to care.
When things started happening on the intertube it was a relief just to know more people than I thought know what's really going on.
I don't preach to anyone anymore.
People used to think I was nuts and some "friends" don't come arround anymore,but the ones that do ask when they have a question about current events or news that bothers them.
I think it's a good illustration that today I saw a commercial for a production hydrogen vehicle,...I have had a "dry cell" in my straight six ford for 4 yrs.it produces alitter a minute and I save about 38% on fuel.
I sell my art work raise my kids fix my house and keep my head low.
My grandfather used to work for a think tank in D.C. and my great grandfather was chief carpenter of the White House for 26yrs.
I have family that work in the Pentagon and supporting offices nearby.
I always keep tabs on things because I was told at fourteen that our family is watched from TPTB.
You see,...I caught my grandfather crying in front of his p.c. one day,and put my hand on his shoulder he looked up at me and said "I helped them make A.I.D.S.",...
Then he told me how they had him devise a caging system for monkeys that were brought in to the U.S. through the ports in P.A.
He wondered why they were paying him so well being an Army Air Corps boy
whos only work for them before this was stealing Russian equipent and weapons and sending them to S.America.
It was sort of an Olie North thing and he almost hung for treason as a scape goat.
As soon as they were done with his services he was fired and locked out of the group.
He started drinking and even though he worked for some really cool places after that.
He is still heart broken and is weathering strokes and being bitter.
I must always watch who is watching me,...after all I may be in #s creek without a paddle,but I don't have to sit backwards.

reply to post by Whyhi


Yeah,,,

I Hear Ya,,,,,,but what do you think NOW?

Gotcha!!! HooHaa

reply to post by rubbertramp


my bad.. I typed in "when did you wake up?" into the search and nothing came up so i thought it was an open topic..

It's funny, before when i was a "sheep", i listened to a lot of the same music but i wasn't listening.. It's like in White Men Can't Jump when Wesley Snipes is telling Woody Harrelson, that even though he's listening to Jimi Hendrix, he still can't hear Jimi Hendrix..

For example: Tupac talked about the illuminati and all the conspiracy theories waaaayy before anyone else was doing it and here i was listening for the beats....

But, and i don't know if this is for better or worse, i cannot listen to the mindless drivel of mainstream music.. I am ashamed of my younger self for not only enjoying but for buying into all that crap.. Thank god, we grow up lol

reply to post by peggy m


Whoa.......

You have serious courage for posting on this website, my friend.. Especially with close tabs like that.. I remember when i first got into conspiracies, i would get afraid when i was by myself, thinking "the man" would come snuff me out as a dissenter

Than i realized i would be pretty low on the list

reply to post by squirelnutz


i was turned onto rage against the machine after i woke up.
i was amazed there was actually people out there speaking their minds.
rage vid

reply to post by rubbertramp


When i was a sheep, i didn't like Rage cuz i thought they were too in your face, pushing politics the way people push religion, but afterwards i loved them too..

the line: "Terror is the product of Bush" still sends chills down my spine considering it was written about his dad and i started listening around the time Bush jr. was elected....

I hate when people wear SoaD or Rage shirts though and are completely ignorant.. Or those #in' Che shirts.. excuse the language