Mark Dice
Mark Dice is an “Illuminati researcher,” aspiring comedian/actor, and a long time Alex Jones guest. Of the people in Alex’s orbits, Mark may have the best independent resume of hustles. In the later parts of his career, he’s pivoted to a largely “scaring Christians about demons” business model, but he has done much more in his life.
Mark’s Hustles
Mark Dice (born Mark Shouldice) has always been a bit of a hustler, but his career has featured an impressive diversity in terms of the nature of his scams.
In 1999, Mark was running a memory enhancement scam called Advanced Memory Concepts. Their website claims to offer books, CDs, and seminars, but don’t list prices for any of them.
A little later, Mark would recognize the popularity of the Pick Up Artist community, and try to capitalize on it by writing a book called “The Book On Dating: Strategies Every Man Should Know.” Mark’s website selling the book even includes a blurb from J-Dog, one of Mystery’s minions on the VH1 show The Pick Up Artist: “Powerful. Simple. Effective. THE Book on Dating simply ROCKS!”
Mark promises to help men with some very important topics in this book, such as how to: “lower her defenses, and separate yourself from the scumbags she constantly meets,” “understand that sex with sluts or casual sex partners is dangerous and not fulfilling,” “use other girls as endorsements to show you’re a nice, normal guy with cute female friends who feel safe around you, and enjoy your company,” and of course “what to do with girls on the rebound.” All very cool things to be fixated on, and definitely not indications that you are desperately trying to intellectualize abusive manipulation.
It’s almost impressively cynical for a person to present themselves as both a defender of Christianity from Satanic attacks, and also a pick up artist.
Mark’s Path To Alex Jones
In 2005, a man online named John Conner released a book called “The Resistance Manifesto.” The book laid out all manner of conspiracies about the Illuminati and New World Order, and became pretty popular in the online “Patriot” communities. Interestingly, the book’s bibliography cites Alex Jones six times (along with Larry Nichols’ “Clinton Chronicles,” Bill Still’s deeply antisemitic “documentary” The Money Masters, and of course, Paul Joseph Watson’s book Order out of Chaos).
For two years, the identity of John Conner remained a mystery, until on March 3, 2007, he revealed himself to actually be named Mark Dice. Actually, he said, “Dice is actually a nick name and a shortened version of my last name which people can't seem to pronounce or spell. So to keep things simple, just call me Mark Dice.”
He can claim that people had a hard time pronouncing his real name all he wants, that won’t stop us from believing that the reality is that he knew the audience he had cultivated, and knew exactly what they would start saying:
Soon after, Dice began appearing on the Alex Jones Show. The exact start date of his first appearance is not clear, but in November 2012, he claimed that he had been making appearances on Alex’s show for six years, so either that timeline is incorrect, or he was going on Alex’s show before revealing himself to be John Conner.
He presented himself as an expert on the New World Order, and whatnot, but in reality, he was really just working off of most of the same sources as Alex already was (generally misrepresentations of Carroll Quigley’s books), but with a larger obsession with the occult.
He would make periodic appearances on Alex’s show, but more importantly, Alex would sell his book on the InfoWars store, and this arrangement went well until April 2011, when the two men had a bit of a falling out.
Mark’s Path Away From Alex Jones
Mark Dice and Alex Jones stopped being friends in 2011 because Alex screwed Mark over on a payment for the books he was selling. To quote Mark:
“In April of 2011 I was expecting a payment from Big Brother [note: this means Alex] and it was almost two weeks late and when I called and asked for the check, he flipped out and told me to fuck off”
Alex would go on to pay Mark, but he also stopped carrying Mark’s book and stopped inviting him onto his show. Naturally, Mark was hurt by this, and decided to begin lashing out.
On his YouTube channel, Mark began producing videos where he parodied and mocked Alex. He began to traffic in conspiracies about Alex being controlled by Stratfor, and that graphic design intern Molly Mulroney was his Stratfor (read: Israeli) handler.
Perhaps more interestingly, because he no longer had a financial stake in appeasing Alex, Mark began to talk shit about how Alex Jones operated:
“No longer putting him on a pedestal as I had for years I clearly started seeing him hype things up I knew weren’t accurate and sensationalize half-truths and misunderstandings (i.e. getting a phone call from the NSA, when in reality it was a prank using a caller ID spoofer).
In my opinion he has to do everything he can to increase his web hits and increase ad revenue because he has so much overhead since the infowars studios grew so big with such a large facility. He’s a conspiracy shock jock entertainer basically, that’s why “everything” is a conspiracy and he doesn’t debunk anything because that’s not fun and exciting radio like talking about how a Swat Team is going to come to your house at any moment to confiscate your guns.”
That description absolutely rings true, but not nearly as much as this one:
“It’s obviously easier to make a living as a con man than it is to be a legitimate businessman or a legitimate, honest person in any field, and the “conspiratainment” genre is certainly no different, and is certainly filled with countless con artists, mentally ill people, and people who mean well but are wrong in many cases.”
April 2011 is where Mark Dice’s story should have ended. He’d entered the belly of the beast and learned that his conspiracy hero was not the man he thought him to be. His hero was a cruel, malicious con man, who naturally turned on Mark when the first difficulty arose.
But, Mark is a con man too, so of course that’s not where his story ended.
Mark’s Path Back To Alex Jones
By 2012, Mark had worn a lot of hats. He was a memory specialist, a pick up artist guru, a New World Order expert, an InfoWars regular, a researcher of the occult, and so much more. Naturally, none of these things really got him as much attention as he wanted, so he decided to pivot.
It’s unclear why, but he decided his new direction was going to be bothering people enjoying their day out at the beach and video-taping it. He began to do really amateurish man-on-the-street videos where he would concoct an absurd premise for a petition, like “Obama wants to ban all guns,” and record annoyed people signing the petition out on the San Diego boardwalk.
Anyone who has lived in a city knows that most of these people just signed the petition because they know that Street Petition People are often persistent, and sometimes it’s best just to sign whatever they have and move along. You don’t have to sign your own name, and it gets rid of the person’s reason to bother you. Mark consistently uses these videos to make arguments like “9 out of 10 liberals want Obama to take all the guns,” when nothing he ever does in any way approximates research or would stand up to the smallest bit of methodological scrutiny. It’s almost like he’s doing nothing.
His videos are also painfully unfunny. Perhaps the funniest thing he’s ever released is this incomprehensible “blooper reel” that mostly consists of Mark cracking himself up about the ruse he’s in the middle of pulling.
It’s truly confusing.
Mark would also make videos where he tried to approximate the “Best Week Ever” style of snarky commentary about current affairs, and because the right wing is painfully starved for anything close to comedy, his channel got pretty popular. This, naturally, led to Alex Jones coming back into his life and trying to get himself a piece of that popularity.
The two made up, Dice started appearing on Alex’s show again and began reinforcing all of Alex’s narratives as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t gone on record as saying that Alex trafficked in “half-truths and misunderstandings.” He pretended he hadn’t accused Alex of being owned by Stratfor, and he removed all his videos that were critical of him.
And that’s where things stand now. Mark appears on Alex’s show from time to time, and Alex will still use his man-on-the-street videos to prop up his arguments. Just two shameless con-men realizing that they both stand to gain more together than they do apart.
Oh, and Mark would appear regularly on Ancient Aliens.
