Abigail, this is a very interesting question. To be honest, I have asked myself this very question a plethora of times. To me, I have a theory that these puppet masters are the Elite or Illuminati of the 21st century. As in the Truman Show film, there was a director Christopher who was controlling the every which move of Truman Burbanks, so also I believe it is in the modern world. Some people would also call these powers by the title of gods, angels, demons, or super natural entities. All of these "beings" are behind the scenes to our 3 dimensional reality which we experience day-to-day. If one could escape from this reality---basically exit the matrix---we could see reality for the truth of what it really is. In 1644, Rene Descartes questioned his reality and could only come up with the sure fact that "cogito ergo sum". Anything more than the knowledge of "I think therefore I am" is not possible to prove for certain. Yet these questions still haunt the minds of the human race, such as, "who am I?", "where did I come from?", and "what is the purpose of life?" If these questions and more are not answerable, but we desire to answer them, we can infer that something is missing to this reality. This missing element is comparable to the reality "outside" Plato's cave. Some religious groups of the ancient world believed that the north pole, Yggdrasil, Mt. Meru, or Shambala was the magical escape from this prison Matrix which we live in. This same concept has regain traction on YouTube by Flat Earth conspiracy theorists and Philosophers alike. I hope this answers some of your question. And more importantly, I hope that it inspires many more questions to come