AUSTIN, Texas — Local man Greg Halpern, 36, whose social media profiles describe himself as “normal dude who doesn’t like to get political,” is moments away from launching into a monologue that will, without question, be a mind-boggling string of nonsense, buzzwords, dog whistles, and conspiracy theories you will ever witness outside of a 4chan post, employees at the bar you are in warn.
“Yeah, I just don’t really get into politics,” Greg lies, as though he’s about to follow it up with a calm reflection on bipartisan cooperation. Instead, within the next 30 seconds, you will be listening to an unhinged tirade about how Wi-Fi is erasing 9/11 from people’s memories, armadillos are government drones sent to spy on Texan culture, and how the show “Survivor” is just a false flag operation to disrupt the governments of lower-middle-income countries.
Locals are very much aware of Halpern and his, supposed, apolitical stance.
“He claims that the shit he says isn’t political because he ‘hates everyone equally.’ He’ll casually reference ‘the way things are these days’ and drop vague mentions of ‘doing research’ and then he hits you with the wildest thing you could possibly imagine,” bartender Turner Casey said while avoiding making eye contact with Halpern. “He’s like a human mad-libs just spilling combinations of proper nouns and verbs you’d never think would go together. One day it is about how Lucky Charms are radicalizing kids and tomorrow it’s about how Ancestry.com is using our DNA to create brain matter that can legally vote. I mean, I can’t say it’s political because I don’t think he even knows who the president is. And trust me, he doesn’t have schizophrenia or anything like that, he’s just…Greg.”
Dr. Linda Crowley, a professor of Conspiracy Theory Psychology at the University of Texas, weighed in on Greg’s unique worldview.
“Individuals like Greg exhibit what’s known as cognitive scattershot syndrome,” Crowley explained. “They take unrelated concepts—like Bigfoot and the IRS—and combine them into elaborate narratives that feel internally logical to them. It’s like their brain is playing a game of six degrees of government interference. To them none of this feels political because, in their mind, it’s not about left or right—it’s about uncovering the ‘truth.’”
At press time, Greg was saying something about nanochips in organic kombucha without picking up the hint that you stopped listening a long time ago.
