Original subtitles

[narrator] The Web transforms us.

We become data...

code...

uploading our very selves...

to a place we call the cloud.

But this cloud is grounded in hardware, a chaos of code.

But with the right tools,

you can find the signal in the noise.

[static]

[Melissa] When they put the tower up in this neighborhood,

life became pretty intolerable.

It was like being tortured 24/7, that you never stopped.

When around Wi-Fi and cell towers,

it feels like it's killing me,

and it's just like I get sicker and sicker from it.

[Woman] It doesn't matter how impaired you are.

When you don't have that mind connected --

When you don't have that, life isn't worth living anymore.

My relationship with my husband has changed.

But I know his mind is there, it's soaring.

[Mike] Marisa was awesome.

She was just a great kid.

She was always happy, always smiling.

Couldn't ask for a better daughter.

We were really close when she was young,

And then when she got older,

you know, we would argue about things, you know?

I got on Facebook, and I noticed I wasn't --

She wasn't my friend anymore.

And I'm like, "Well, what's this all about?"

[Jackie] I do remember her talking to me about this group,

but, you know, like, I had no idea what this group was.

Prior to this, I would never have believed

that there was such a thing as an Internet cult.

[narrator] We escape through our screens --

From boredom and loneliness, from our problems,

our limitations, ourselves.

You can find freedom online.

But you can also find yourself isolated, ensnared in the web.

And the more you struggle, the harder it is to break free.

[Melissa] The lights are a little bit much for me right now,

especially from above.

So, if there is a way to possibly turn them off,

that would be better.

[light switch clicks]

Yeah, that's a lot better. Thank you.

[narrator] Melissa wasn't always this way.

She wasn't always an electrosensitive.

[Melissa] I always wanted to be a pilot -- my whole life.

It was the best job ever.

Life was good until I got sick.

[Static]

This is a radio-frequency meter.

The high-pitch noise you're hearing is the cell tower

coming in from this direction over here.

Most people, they're just not feeling what I'm feeling.

[clicking]

[narrator] What Melissa is feeling are electrical waves --

signals transmitted from cellphones, baby monitors,

and many other devices in the Internet of things --

Wi-Fi, too.

They're making Melissa sick.

[Melissa] I will turn bright red.

I get really dehydrated,

and my eyes get really, really blurry.

I can tolerate the computer for a while,

as long as it's a land line computer

and not a wireless connection.

I'm so sensitive, that if a neighbor were to turn Wi-Fi on

next door I wouldn't be able to stay in my own house.

[narrator] Headaches, sleeplessness, irritability --

Soon, she couldn't do her job or really much of anything

except live with a new kind of disease

almost no one took seriously.

[Melissa] We turn most of the power off all the time.

We have flashlights everywhere in the house.

We've put shielding up on the one side of the house

for the neighbors and the rest of the neighborhood there,

to try and minimize what comes into this house.

[narrator] Melissa has put herself and her husband

under quarantine from the wireless world.

So far, Sweden and Germany are the only countries

that recognize electrohypersensitivity

as a disease.

But EHS has nonetheless gone viral.

There are EHS sufferers all over the world --

some say as many as 5% of the population.

And there's no cure.

[Melissa] Doctors that deal with this --

There was really nothing they could really do for me,

other than tell me to move away from it.

♪♪

Hi, Henry.

Just folding laundry. What have you been up to?

[narrator] This is Henry.

Actually, this is a Wi-Fi controlled device

called a B.E.A.M...

Bye, Henry. I'm almost done.

I'll be right over, okay?

...operated by Henry.

A dozen years ago, he was in perfect health --

a father, a successful businessman,

a long-distance runner.

Then, he suffered a sudden, massive stroke.

He was unable to speak or move.

He was locked in.

[Via computer] Before the stroke, I was 40,

and it felt like life was just beginning.

The night before the stroke, I went to bed.

The next day I felt badly.

When I woke up, I got tunnel vision.

I felt weak and dizzy.

My physical body was suddenly and inexpectedly shutting down.

When I started to come to, I was on life support.

I had no motor control.

I was basically a vegetable.

Trapped in my own body, I cannot escape.

I was telling him, "Henry, you're there."

And he's looking at me like, "Yeah, I'm here. Duh."

[narrator] Henry was there, but getting to him took technology.

[Woman] The communication evolved over time.

It went from eye-blinks, and then it was the board.

"T"..."S"...

[narrator] Adaptive technology was the key that helped unlock Henry.

Digitizing his head, eye, and finger movements

enabled him to connect with and control the world around him.

Hack after hack, he could do more and more.

[Henry] All technologies I use

help me regain control over my environment.

I found a power wheelchair I liked.

A medical equipment vendor fitted it with a head array

so I could drive with my head.

I also have a device I control with brain waves

which lets me sip single-malt scotch whiskey

without needing a caregiver to spoon it to me.

[chuckles]

I have always been fiercely independent.

With one stroke, I became completely dependent

for everything -- eating, drinking, going to the bathroom.

It is something I doubt I will ever come to grips with.

I have no choice and no way out.

I really wanted to be a good Dad, and I wanted to have

a family unit because I didn't have one.

Like every parent,

I just wanted Marisa to be happy and healthy.

[Jackie] When she was in high school, she started to rebel.

Apparently, she was going through some pain

that I was not aware of.

[Mike] I went to the mailbox, and I got a letter.

And it says, "Hello, Dad, I have decided to take

an indefinite break from our relationship.

Please do not try to contact me.

I will contact you if and when

I decide to resume our relationship.

Sincerely, Marisa."

And my ex got the same letter.

The letter was three sentences long,

basically telling me not to contact her

and that she would get in touch with me

if and when she ever decided to do that.

I was full of fear not knowing what was going on with her,

not knowing if she was alive.

It was devastating, to say the least.

And I tried to call her -- She wouldn't answer her phone.

The last thing I told her is

"I will always be here for you, Marisa.

Whenever you decide to reach me is fine.

I'll always love you, and I'll always, you know,

always care about you and"...

Time.

[sighs]

[narrator] Mike O'Connor and his ex Jackie

had no idea where Marisa had gone.

But they did begin to have a sense of why she had gone.

Hi, everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.

Hope you're doing well. I know I am.

[Mike] The first time I heard about Freedomain

is when Marisa started telling me about it.

And I said, "Oh, that's interesting,"

and she said, "Yeah, you should check it out."

So, I looked it up online,

and I looked at a couple of the podcasts.

You know, a match burns because it has ignition and friction.

I bring the ignition, the world brings the friction,

and we bring light to what was formerly dark.

The gift of thought -- nothing thinks but us!

[narrator] Freedomain Radio -- a series of podcasts and videos

created by this man, a former software salesman

named Stefan Molyneux.

Every single time in history, philosophers lose.

Now, by God, we could win.

All you have to do is say no!

It really does damn well matter to me

how you raise your children.

I have to live with the effects of your good or bad parenting.

[Mike] When I got into these podcasts,

I realized that he was telling

all these people that followed him

that all parents were bad parents.

[Molyneux] A child is a complete slave to the parents,

and it's the greatest power disparity in the world.

Molyneux said all parents totally screwed up their kids,

and that the only way to free yourself

from that was to "deFOO."

[narrator] FOO -- F-O-O -- Family of Origin.

So, for Molyneux, to deFOO means

to cut off all ties to your family.

[Molyneux] Life is short,

and if you can't get people around you to treat you well,

then don't bother being around them,

and this is the deFOOing process.

[narrator] He calls himself an anarchist

and disseminates his ideas online on topics ranging

from philosophy to history or parenting.

His followers are spread across the world,

and they gather at the Freedomain Radio website --

a massive Internet forum with over three thousand hours

of original podcasts and over 303,000 posts and comments.

There are thousands more

on assorted FDR groups on Facebook.

Analyzing the user data from these groups,

a composite of the average FDR follower emerges --

male, college-educated, single, and between 25 and 34.

[Molyneux] You can't be free, in a political sense,

until you deal with you family.

[Steven] Stefan Molyneux says, "to see the farm is to leave the farm."

When you see the bars of the cage that you're in,

you can pull the bars aside and step into a new frontier.

[narrator] Steven is a 28-year-old therapist in Portland,

And just like Mike's daughter Marisa,

he's been a subscriber and active member

of Molyneux's community.

[Steven] When I first discovered Stefan Molyneux,

what I really admired about him early on

was he spoke to me as an equal.

He spoke to me as a fellow traveler, if you will.

He talked about the idea

that all adult relationships are voluntary in nature.

I was really excited by this idea,

that all my adult relationships could be voluntary.

My parents were really loving in some ways,

and then they failed pretty miserably in other ways.

And I got away from them, and it was a huge relief.

And I was listening to the podcast at the time.

The nature of the technology is that --

Well, it's right in your home.

So, whatever community you want to connect to --

Yeah, it's a way out of the fucking abuse of your parents.

More power to the kid that wants to escape their family system.

[narrator] And now, just like Molyneux,

Steven makes his own podcast and YouTube videos.

I'm Steve Franssen.

Today I want to talk about going with someone else

into things that are emotionally painful for you.

The community that Stefan Molyneux

and very dedicated listeners have created

could not have existed pre-Internet.

Sometimes -- Sometimes...

[Melissa] The Internet provides a way to connect

with other people that are all over the world.

And so, I don't feel alone in this at all.

Are you going through Pennsylvania, again?

Yeah, kind of through Detroit, Toledo,

and then go east from there into Pennsylvania.

[Man] Of course I worry about my wife.

I miss her when she's gone, and the situation

takes a toll on the relationship.

[narrator] In the U.S. there are thousands who believe they have EHS,

and if you look at the Internet chatter,

what they're Tweeting and posting and Facebooking about,

this place comes up -- Green Bank, West Virginia --

the only certifiably Wi-Fi-free zone in America.

The Garden of Eden for electrosensitives.

[Melissa] I travel to Green Bank usually about two weeks of every month.

I do the drive all at once.

I don't stop and stay in a hotel

'cause I can't stay in a hotel.

Most of the time, you're on the interstate,

and there's always cell towers

all the way along the interstate.

[static]

Cell towers feel like it's just, like, energy

coming from it on your body that I can feel on my skin.

But if you keep moving, it's almost like

if you were walking across hot coals, right?

If you stopped, your feet would start burning.

[static]

[birds chirping]

[Quiet static]

I consider Green Bank an escape.

I look at it as a place to recover.

A place that I can just have myself back.

I can have my life back.

It feels great on my body, and I'm up really high,

and it kind of reminds me of when I used to fly.

Unfortunately, the fallout from this is

that it's hard on all your relationships.

I don't see anybody nearly as much as I used to.

I feel like I let my family down,

'cause I was always there for them before.

So, I miss my friends and my family, and, honestly,

you shouldn't have to leave the country

to not be exposed to this stuff.

"Wireless refugee" is a common term in Green Bank.

[narrator] While you're looking for more bars,

Melissa and her fellow electrosensitives

are looking for a way to pry them apart.

But these days, it's almost impossible

to escape the reach of wireless networks.

Google is sharing plans online

to blanket the globe with Wi-Fi.

Yes, global Internet -- universal connectivity --

no spot on earth without coverage.

It means for sensitives like Melissa,

there will be no place to go.

They will be completely trapped.

But for people like Henry,

it means a whole new world of escape.

[Henry] Some of the projects people are working on for me

right now include bringing the remote control camera along

on a mountain-climbing expedition

so I can join them in real time,

installing a smart telepresence robot

on a sailing ship so I can go along on a sailing trip.

The possibilities are endless.

In a way, it's a relief from what could be

a very tedious and lonely world.

Morning, handsome.

Ready?

[Henry] Every day begins with the morning routine --

My wife sits me up...

brushes my teeth...

puts on my glasses...

changes my catheter...

feeds me breakfast...

dresses me...

puts me in my wheelchair...

and sets me up on the computer.

Henry has a very strong presence online --

He has a blog, he does Facebook,

he'll send e-mails out.

This is his only way of communicating.

That is his world --

cyberspace, the Internet, Facebook, all that.

That is his world, and he loves it.

He embraces it.

♪♪

Is that okay, Henry? With your glasses? Yeah?

Can see? You good?

Okay. So, you'll see it blink.

We're just gonna go ahead and restart it

so that it re-calibrates to where you are.

So, get wherever you want the center to be.

And the double-click is take-off,

and double-click is also land.

And then tilting forward is forward,

backwards, backward.

Okay. Good to go.

[narrator] For Henry, technology is the answer, the way out.

He's ready to take flight.

Ooh.

But for the moment, he's still in beta.

It was like two years into Marisa's deFOOing

that one of her friends had called my son and said,

"Hey, we found Marisa."

When Marisa was living here,

I was worried about her, you know?

I mean, just because, you know,

it's not the greatest of neighborhoods.

It was here -- The Aloha.

This is it.

Yeah, I actually parked, and I kind of just peeked in there,

and was just looking.

You know, I did it two or three times.

I just parked down the street, and then I kind of just look up,

you know, this corner right here, and, you know,

try to see if I could see her, you know, moving around.

You know, she was basically in there

just on her podcasts everyday in this little, dingy apartment.

I started listing to the podcast hoping that I would hear --

because people call-in, it's like a call-in show --

And I was hoping I would hear her,

and hear what she had to say and just try to figure out

why she did what she did.

[Molyneux] This is Stefan Molyneux.

[Marisa] Hi. Hello.

I've decided to deFOO from both of my parents.

Right. Go on. Can you tell me what you're feeling?

[Voice breaking] I'm feeling really sad right now.

Right. Right.

[Marisa] I was in a lonely place in my life.

I was very depressed and anxious.

And when I discovered Stefan Molyneux,

I thought he was just a podcaster on the Internet.

I listened to thousands of hours of podcasts.

I was really kind of relieved to hear

that I didn't have any, like, obligations to my parents.

My Dad -- I didn't think

that he treated me or my brother right.

His temper was probably my main concern.

With my Mom, she didn't like

that I wasn't as religious as she was.

I really felt like she was choosing religion over me.

Then when I found FDR, I ended up choosing FDR over her.

Molyneux convinced me that my parents manipulated me

into thinking that they are great people who love me --

That my feelings of love towards my family

and my friends, that's like Stockholm Syndrome.

So, pretty much at that point, I had made the decision to deFOO.

[narrator] With her decision made,

Marisa started her new life with her new virtual family.

[Marisa] Every aspect of Freedomain Radio is online.

The podcasts are all available online,

the forums are all available online,

all of my friendships that I made through the group

were all online.

When I deFOOed, it was definitely devastating.

I cried a lot.

I felt incredibly guilty.

I would think about my Mom sitting, you know,

by the phone crying in case I called,

you know, which was just awful.

I also felt really bad about my younger brother

who I stopped talking to as well.

And I missed them.

So, I made myself searchable online

so that they could know that I was okay.

I named my blog my name.

[Mike] She was putting these daily blogs in there,

and I was so relieved,

because just to know that she was safe and she was alive

gave me a lot of comfort.

Those bread crumbs that I saw,

the Internet with her name attached to it,

was definitely a lifeline.

It was the only connection I had.

[Marisa] My brother -- He contacted me on my Tumblr blog.

They have, like, a little "ask me anything" button,

and he sent me a message just saying, you know,

"I really miss you. Please just, like, talk to me."

I was just so excited to hear from him.

And kind of at that point, it was like I kind of knew

that I had been taken in by a cult,

and that I didn't make that decision rationally.

You know, I was like, "You know what?

I'm gonna give my parents another shot.

I'm gonna try this again."

[narrator] With their digital reconnection came a very analog reunion.

But they've never talked about Marisa's deFOOing until now.

♪♪

When me and Jackie had you guys, we swore we were going to be

the best parents in the world, you know?

We tried so hard, and, you know,

I think you've learned a lot,

and I'm sure when you have a family,

you know, you'll make your mistakes,

but I think you'll do a lot better

than me and your Mom did.

I think both of you will.

Yeah, I'm sorry that I ended up hurting all of you so much.

I'm glad you guys held out hope.

We always did.

I was really nervous about talking to you.

And I loved that you, like, apologized to me

because I wasn't expecting an apology.

You know, I was expecting to be doing

most of the apologizing,

and especially in that first conversation,

and that just meant so much to me

that you showed understanding to that decision.

I really appreciated that. Thank you.

For... for me, uh --

[sniffles] I need to stop.

Want a break, Mama?

[crying]

[Mike] I used to think that a cult was something

where they had to take you somewhere

and, you know, reprogram you.

And now they can do it on a screen.

They don't need to take you somewhere and isolate you,

they can do it, you know, through technology.

[Marisa] The leading cult expert in the country,

he has a website where he lists,

like, high-demand and cult groups.

And I submitted Freedomain Radio to that website,

and they ended up posting what I submitted.

So, Stefan Molyneux, he's now registered as, like,

somebody to look out for [laughs] on there.

So, I feel pretty good about that.

[Melissa] I've met a lot of people through this.

But even though Green Bank is a really great place to go

for the few that are able to travel there,

it's really just a tiny band-aid on this whole problem.

There's a whole bunch of people getting sick,

and nothing's being done about it.

I feel that this is really a giant human-rights catastrophe.

People still want Wi-Fi covering the entire planet.

They want it 'cause it makes their life easier,

or they just feel more connected all the time.

You know, in two years there will be Wi-Fi from space.

There will be no where to go -- even in Green Bank.

So, I don't think there's much of a future for people

who are electrosensitive at all if things don't change.

[Henry] Today, I will try to fly the drone high enough

to see the bridges.

With drones, I am able to escape

the surly bonds of Earth.

I think a lot about frailty as human beings,

and how we all use mechanical devices

to overcome limitations.

In this way, everyone is actually acting

like they are disabled,

and I don't feel unique in that regard.

We are more than our physical selves.

♪♪